Wake
by InkHarbor
Summary: Nancy Thompson doesn't know what the ruthless doctors at Westin Hills want from her and the other patients. She doesn't know what the burnt man in her dreams is after, either. But Freddy knows. And he wants more than just her blood on his claws. CONTAINS GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT AND VIOLENCE. AU: NOES 1.
1. No One's Home

**Author's Note:** **Here it is: the first chapter of my new story. Now on to the disclaimers and warnings!**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own A Nightmare on Elm Street or any of its characters.**

 **WARNING: CERTAIN CHAPTERS OF THE FOLLOWING STORY WILL CONTAIN GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, AND ADULT LANGUAGE. TO AVOID SPOILERS, THERE WILL NOT BE INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS FOR EACH CHAPTER.**

* * *

 **Wake**

 **Chapter One: No One's Home  
**

 **1981**

Nancy flinched as the burnt-out end of a cigarette hit her square in the forehead. It landed in her lap, still curling with white smoke.

"You're gonna hurt my feelings if you keep zoning out like that," Rod Lane said. "What's the matter? Are we not entertaining enough for ya?"

She looked up to see that wicked smirk on his face. His hand was still raised in front of him, thumb and forefinger spread wide to make it obvious that he'd flicked the smoke at her.

"Leave her alone, you pain in the ass," Glen said. He was leaning forward from his seat on the couch beside her, trying to look intimidating. Nancy hid a small smile. It was sweet of him to jump to her rescue, but also completely useless. With his slender build and doe eyes, Glen was about as intimidating as a gazelle.

Rod put up his hands in mock defense. "Hey, man, I just want everyone to participate in our discussion. How else are we gonna heal our _deep-rooted psychological trauma_?"

"Group ended six hours ago," Glen spat. "And none of us want to hear about all the girls you screwed in junior high."

"How do you know?" he countered. "Did you _ask_ the ladies?"

Nancy rolled her eyes and drew her legs up onto the cream couch cushion. "Certain things go without saying," she muttered before flinging Rod's cigarette back at him. It bounced off his knee and fell to the white tiled floor.

"That's your opinion," he sneered. "Tina, what about you? Wouldn't you like to hear the rest of the story?"

Tina, who had been sitting in his lap and absent-mindedly twirling his black, olive oil hair, leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. "Not one word of it, dickhead. You're much cuter when you don't talk."

"You guys suck, you know that?" Rod said. "Maybe I should take Dr. Simms' advice and surround myself with 'people who listen, understand and refrain from judgment.'"

"That sounds like a great idea, Rod," said a deep voice.

All four kids snapped their faces toward the doorway as Max, a large orderly in green scrubs, strolled into the TV room. He came up behind them and braced his hands on the back of the couch.

"You can start your search tomorrow morning," he said. "It's lights out."

At those last few words, a chorus of groans erupted from the teenagers.

"Come on, Max. It's only eleven," Nancy argued. "One more hour?"

Max held up a hand to silence them. He breathed in deeply, about to concede with a sigh, when he froze. His brow furrowed. "Why do I smell smoke?"

Rod slid his foot over the cigarette bud on the floor and stepped on it. With an easy smirk, he said, "Same reason I smell sweet, sweet pussy everywhere I go: Your brain knows what you want, and it loves to tease."

"You ain't fooling anybody," he said, sniffing the air again. He shot one last suspicious glance toward Rod and turned back to the door. "Just as long as it ain't pot," he said under his breath.

"Oh, what - If it were drugs you would have told on us?" Rod said, despite the glares he got from his friends.

Max stopped mid-step and looked over his shoulder. His smile was bright, nestled in a dark brown beard. "Hell no. If it were drugs," he said with a twinkle in his eye, "I would have joined you."

He left the room whistling. From down the hallway they heard him shout back, "You got one hour."

"I love you, Max," Tina called out before falling into a fit of giggles. Her thin arms wrapped around the back of Rod's neck, and she let her head fall against his shoulder.

"Jesus," Glen said, "When are they gonna stop putting us to bed like we're toddlers?"

"Max is alright," Nancy said with a shrug.

His tone was thick with contempt. "Yeah. _Max._ But the rest of them are either robots or assholes."

She couldn't exactly disagree with him on that. None of the orderlies, nurses or doctors at Westin Hills seemed to care that much about their patients. They do what's outlined in the job description, and nothing more. Most of them don't even look at you when they pass you in the hallway. And the therapists just regurgitate the same textbook bullshit at every group session (in slightly different words).

She looked across the room at the potted fern in the corner, beside the television set. This room was designed to feel homey, but instead it all came across as bland and impersonal. The walls were a plain-paper white. The tiles were waxed linoleum, covering the floor in neat rows like the most boring jigsaw puzzle in the world. The fluorescent ceiling lights would be better suited to a dentist's office. This was everyone's home, and this was no one's home. The bars fitted into the window frames were there to remind them of that.

"They don't give a shit about helping anyone," said Rod. "If anything, this place will make you even crazier. Especially after you find out what happened here."

"What happened?" Nancy asked.

"You don't want to know," he said.

Her gut was telling her to drop the subject, but she knew that wasn't going to happen. "I know what I want," she said. "besides, you brought it up. Just tell me."

Rod scoffed. "Why? So your little guard puppy can growl at me again for giving you nightmares?"

Glen hadn't been paying much attention to the conversation, but he heard that last remark and shot Rod a dirty look. "You're full of it. Nothing _happened_ here," he said. "It only shows how smart you are, that you believe in all those campfire stories."

"It _did_ happen," Rod said with a flash of irritation.

Nancy sat up straighter and leaned in, as if an invisible string tethered her to the object of her curiosity. "Come on."

Rod let out an exasperated sigh, and she knew he'd caved. "Fine. But don't bitch to me if you don't like what you hear."

"Don't be so dramatic, babe," Tina interrupted. She was obviously still high from whatever rainbow-colored pills her _wonderful boyfriend_ had French-kissed down her throat an hour ago, Nancy thought. They all ignored her and got down to business.

"It was way back in the nineteen-thirties," Rod began.

Glen's eyes held a flicker of skepticism. "Are we supposed to be scared of something that happened fifty years ago? That's-"

"Shut the hell up," Rod said. "You wanted to hear it."

"Go on," Nancy urged, waving a hand at Glen to hush him as he rolled his eyes.

Rod cracked his neck to the side and dropped an arm over the back of his cushiony chair, content with the silence. " _As I was saying_ , this chick used to work here back in the thirties. She was a nurse or something, working in the Hathaway House across town and that old tower out behind the fences." He pointed a lazy finger at the end of his draped arm, and Nancy glanced at the barred window. It was too dark outside to see anything, but she knew what he was talking about.

"That was where they kept all the biggest assholes in Ohio," he continued.

"You mean 'the most violent psychiatric patients' in Ohio," Glen corrected.

"Too many syllables. And I already told you once to shut up; don't make me tell you again."

Rod talked shit, but Nancy could tell that he wasn't annoyed by the interruptions. His mind was somewhere else now.

"Right before the staff locked the tower down for Christmas break, she went in to do God knows what and got locked inside. No one came back for days," Rod went on.

Nancy sat on the edge of the couch, hanging on his every word. He knew what she was waiting for, and he fell silent for a few moments just to see her squirm. Even Glen couldn't look away. Finally, he continued with his usual inappropriate smirk. "A hundred whack-jobs pounded her like a raw meatloaf."

"Oh my God," Nancy whispered as she covered her mouth.

"Eww," Tina spoke up again, "I don't wanna hear about that, Rod. It's gross."

He grabbed her waist and pulled her back against his chest, kissing her neck. "Sex with an institutionalized man isn't such a bad thing," he said. "You didn't seem to mind it last night."

"Did they kill her?" Nancy asked.

"No, she did that part herself, thirty years later. Never even quit the job," he said.

Glen was unmoved, or at least pretending to be. "Again: Why are we supposed to be scared? The tower's been empty for decades."

"That's what _you_ think," Rod said. "But I know a guy who swears he saw her in there."

"Oh, yeah? Who?" Glen asked, not having any of this superstitious nonsense.

"Kevin Murdock."

"That guy's a fucking psycho!" Glen shouted, throwing up his hands.

" _Quiet_ , Glen," Nancy said. They all waited a few seconds to see if any of the hospital's staff had heard them, then continued speaking in hushed voices.

"Murdock's the only guy in this whole place that deserves to be here," Glen continued. "You can't believe a single word that comes out of his mouth. He's nuts."

"Isn't he that guy who's supposed to be getting some new operation done?" Nancy asked.

"Yeah," Glen said. "And it'll be the best thing that ever happened to him."

Rod was livid, raking a thick-jointed hand through his hair. "You don't know that. They're just using him as a guinea pig because if something goes wrong, no one will miss him."

"People don't usually miss _psychos_ , Rod," Glen said in a condescending tone, as if he were explaining to a five-year-old that Santa Claus wasn't real.

"No." Rod shook his head. "I Shoot the shit with this guy sometimes: He's descent. A little off, but not completely gone. We were playing black jack a week ago when he told me what he saw. If you could have seen the look on his face, you'd know he meant every goddamn word."

"So, he saw the girl? The dead one?" Nancy asked, trying to pull him from the argument.

Rod nodded. "He saw her. She wasn't a girl anymore, though. She's old as shit."

"Nancy, please don't tell me you believe this crap," Glen said.

"Why don't we go and see for ourselves?" she offered.

"That's not a-"

"What's the harm if it's not real?" she interrupted.

"Oh, I don't know," he replied, tapping his chin. "Maybe _solitary confinement_ for attempted escape."

"But we're not 'escaping.' We're exploring," she said.

"They don't know that."

Nancy slid closer to him, eyes wide and earnest. "They wouldn't have to know anything, Glen. We'd be right back before Max comes to check on us."

She and Rod stared at him. Meanwhile, Tina played with Rod's earlobe, not caring if they were to spend the night in that room or go on a rocket-ship ride to Mars.

Glen groaned. "Alright. Let's go. Shall we take turns trying to squeeze between the window bars, or do you have a magic spell that will let us phase through the locked doors?"

Rod flashed an arrogant smile that seemed to say _you're about to look really dumb in a few minutes_.

"Follow me," he said, nudging Tina off his lap so he could stand up. She stumbled into the coffee table and steadied herself before taking Rod's arm. At the doorway, Nancy peered out into the hall. It was empty.

"All clear," she whispered.

The kids snuck between offices and patient bedrooms, each dressed in the same white buttoned-down pajama top and bottoms. Most of the nurses had clocked out for the night, and the blinds were closed over the frosted glass on every office door. Rod led them through vacant corridors toward an abandoned wing of the hospital. The rooms there had been out of use since long before any of them had taken up residence at Westin Hills. The bulbs in the ceiling lights had died out years ago and been left hanging.

They walked through darkness which was broken up only by light from the windows spaced along the wall. Moonbeams flowing in through each window projected luminous squares onto the floor, with the shadow of bars slotted across. All except for one. As Nancy approached it, she saw only two black bars clustered off to one side of the glowing patch, and that was where Rod stopped. He turned to the corresponding window and grinned.

A thick layer of dust covered what was left of the corroded metal bars. Five had fallen out and were lying in a crumbled pile on the floor below. Cracks splintered along the remaining two. When Nancy stepped closer, she saw that the glass behind it was broken, letting in a night breeze that stirred her wavy brown hair.

"Nobody comes down here anymore," Rod said. "As you can see, we've got a bit of a security breach on our hands."

Glen chuckled before he could stop himself.

"Step back for a second," Rod told Nancy. She gave him some space, and he grabbed onto one of the bars, jiggling it like a loose tooth. The bolts and screws clattered onto the windowsill. Everyone but Rod shielded their mouths and noses against the expanding dust cloud. Rod gave one last hard tug and the bar came out. Next, he undid his nightshirt, pulling it off to wrap the clothes around his elbow. As he smashed out the remaining edge of jagged glass around the frame, Tina trailed her fingers down his toned back.

"Ooh," she said, "I like where this is going."

Rod finished brushing off the shards and turned to her. Her pupils were huge in the feeble light. "Baby, I don't think you have a clue where this is going," he said with a sly chuckle. "But I like your attitude."

"Would you two knock it off?" Glen said. He ignored the glare from Tina and stepped forward. "Come here, Nancy." He motioned to her and she went. With a grunt, he and Rod lifted her up into the window frame. She climbed out and dropped to the grass, then assisted the other three. Tina came first, then Glen, and finally Rod, since he was the tallest and didn't need anyone to help him up.

The tower before them stood high against a backdrop of twinkling stars, a stone monument to some of the darkest days of the psychiatric practice in America. Moonlight edged the decrepit grey bricks in silver. To Nancy, it looked like a giant tomb, and she couldn't imagine being locked inside for even one night.

They crossed the grassy lot and hopped the rattling chain-link fence that was supposed to deter people from going any closer. As she approached the intimidating wooden doors of the main entrance, Nancy got a better look at the neglected state of the building. The face of each brick was porous and crumbling, worn down from ages of weather. They mounted the wide flight of steps, and were greeted by a heavy padlock hanging between the brass door handles.

"Great," Glen said. "Now let's go back. You couldn't break that lock if Tina's boobs depended on it."

But Rod and Nancy didn't look the least bit concerned. Rod pulled out a loose brick from the tower's shambling exterior wall and struck it against one of the handles. After a few blows, it came off and dangled below the lock.

"I don't have to," said Rod. He chucked the brick and pushed in the door. It opened up like a black hole in front of them. Nancy stared into it, stomach clenching and palms moist. She stepped through.

 **xxxxxx**

"Check this out," Rod said. Glen and Tina came up behind him to see what he was pointing to. Nancy glanced over at them. They were crowded around a low wooden cabinet stocked with tiny glass jars. The narrow beam of Rod's flashlight passed over them. Each had a label that was almost too faded to read, but they could make out a few words. Glen reached through the shattered glass door and took out three bottles.

"It's insulin." He turned it upside down, swishing the clear liquid. The other two were the same, and as Glen was putting them back and starting to turn away, Tina stopped him.

"What's that in the back?" she asked.

Rod leaned down to see what she was pointing at. "Where?"

Tina shoved her arm inside the cabinet before anyone could stop her.

"Be careful, Tina!" Rod yelled. She'd cut her arm on the edge of broken glass but was unaware of it as she pulled out the jar. Rotating it between her thumb and forefinger, Tina examined the thick red liquid inside with her dilated eyes.

"It's blood," she said, holding it closer to read the label. A thin trickle of her own blood rolled down her forearm. "It says…type AB negative, twenty milliliters, and-" She paused and narrowed her eyes. "What does that say? At the bottom?"

Rod crouched and shined the light at it, trying to decipher the tiny print. When he figured out what it said, he snatched it from her like it were a hissing rattlesnake. "Jesus. Don't touch that."

"What's your problem?" she whined.

"It's infected with _malaria_ ," he said.

Glen's nose wrinkled in repulsion. "Why did they keep that in here?"

"Who knows," Rod said, shrugging. "Stop being so careless, Tina. Alright?"

She cuddled up next to him. "Aww, is someone worried about me?" she teased.

Rod scoffed and pushed her away, and she almost fell into Glen before catching herself. "Jerk," she mumbled.

Nancy had been watching them from across the room while she sat on her haunches, leafing through an old, heavy duty filing cabinet. She was planning to go and smack Rod in the back of the head, but something diverted her attention. She could have sworn a hand had been wrapped around the edge of the doorframe right beside her. Blinking, she rose to her feet. It was probably her imagination, but she had to see for herself. Without so much as a fleeting glance to her friends, who were arguing about whether or not Rod was a pussy, she stepped toward the doorway. It led back out into the corridor, which was much harder to navigate without Rod's flashlight. She felt her way along with one hand on the wall, promising herself that she wouldn't go too far before returning.

The hall was lined with doors, some opened and some completely off their hinges. Each one was so dark, she thought there could have been nothing on the other side but a void. She passed by, wondering what was within them but not having the nerve to stand still and look. The darkness seemed to flow out of them and follow behind her, and when she turned around, she could no longer see the other end of the hall. Darkness hung like an impenetrable curtain.

She continued on, ignoring the tightness in her chest. No one was in here. And if someone was, then they were probably another patient out exploring or messing around, same as her. That would explain why the person was being so quiet.

"I'm not a nurse," Nancy whisper-shouted. "I'm not going to tell on you; I'm not supposed to be out here, either. Hello?"

She felt stupid. There had been no hand, and no one was hiding in these rooms. _Get a grip, Nancy_.

When the wall appeared in front of her, she nearly walked into it. A dead end. "Okay, well, have fun imaginary floating hand," she called in no particular direction. "I'm going back now."

She sighed and turned around, and almost walked into the wall.

Again.

"What the hell?" She reached up to feel the cold stones, wondering how a wall had erected itself there in the five seconds she hadn't been looking. Maybe Rod had slipped _her_ some colorful pills, too. The new corridor which had opened up wasn't as long as the one she'd come from; she could see the other end from here. And she didn't like what she saw.

A long stairwell descended into hazy layers of darkness. She approached it with hesitant steps, watching carefully for any sign of motion.

"Glen? Tina?" she called. "Are you guys still here?"

There was nowhere to go but straight ahead, yet her feet resisted every inch. The closer she got to it, the more it seemed like a cavernous mouth waiting to swallow her. An unshakable feeling had rooted itself in her mind that someone was standing at the bottom of those steps. The possibilities overran her imagination.

Sharp teeth. Wicked intent. Arms spread wide, ready to grab her.

"Glen?" she whispered, voice shakier than before.

Swallowing the lump that had grown in her dry throat, she pressed on. The stairs led down to an expansive room with high-set windows along the back wall. She started to move toward them, hoping to get out that way, but stopped when she banged her thigh on something hard. A quiet curse slipped from between her gnashed teeth as she leaned over to rub the sore spot. The object in front of her took a more definite shape with each passing second while her eyes adjusted to the dark. The surface was curved and white. It had a dull porcelain finish like what you'd see on a toilet. But this wasn't a toilet.

It was a bathtub. The room was full of them, lined up in rows. Thick leather restraints hung down each side, with adjustable brass buckles for the tightest fit. She shuddered as she pictured dozens upon dozens of gaunt, naked lunatics pulling their wrists against the straps and writhing in the water as it slowly turned cold.

Nancy darted between them to the windows. Her palms pushed hard against the glass, but it wouldn't budge. There was no latch, no way to slide it open. The thick plate of glass had been cemented into the wall with the intent for it to remain there, sealing off the outside world. As she scanned the room for something to smash it with, she saw a figure standing against the wall opposite from her. She didn't want to believe that it was anything more than a mannequin draped in fabric. Then it started coming toward her.

"You won't get out that way, child," said the figure. The voice was that of a woman's, gentle and tempered with age. Her tone had an underlying sadness that eased some of the tension in Nancy's shoulders. But she still backed into the wall behind her as the woman approached. When the figure stepped under the meager light from the windows, Nancy saw that it was an old nun. Her hair was hidden beneath a white headdress and her frail body beneath loosely flowing robes. A single cross pendant adorned her chest.

"You can't get out at all. Don't you know who runs this place?" the woman asked. When she had been on the other side of the room, the echoes of her voice had sounded natural. Now she was close to Nancy, but her words still sounded like they were coming from far away.

They both looked to the ceiling as a sheet of powdered mortar rained down on them, shaken loose by the roar of an explosion above. The tower sounded like it had been consumed in an inferno up to its highest levels. A blazing light like the glow of hellfire flooded down from the top of the stairwell. The flames flickered behind the silhouette of a man on the bottom step. He stood with one shoulder dipped low and the bold outline of a fedora on his head. The black fingers on one of his hands stretched to a point down by his knees, hanging motionless like a claw. He splayed them wide.

Before she had a chance to scream, she was sitting up in bed and drenched in sweat. Her damp white sheets were cold to the touch. With a deep sigh, she fell backward into the pillow. Strands of hair were stuck flat against her glistening forehead. Staring up at the ceiling, she tried to calm herself, but her shallow breaths couldn't keep up with the hammering in her ears.

Tina lay asleep in the cot across the room, with only her blonde hair peeking out from beneath the blanket. A blue lamp sat on the nightstand between them. Nancy fought the urge to reach over and switch it on; she didn't want to disturb her friend. Curling onto her side, she closed her eyes and wished to go back to sleep as quickly as possible to a nicer dream. Her lips parted a bit as her muscles relaxed, and soon she was once again on the edge of consciousness.

Until something brought her back.

She tilted her ear toward the door, where she was sure she heard something. Pushing aside her covers, she crept across the floor and crouched by the keyhole for a peek. The hall was empty. The knob gave off a squeak when she turned it, and she left the door open behind her. Whatever she'd heard was much clearer out here. It almost sounded like groaning, but that couldn't be possible. It wasn't coming from any of the bedrooms. Instead, the noise echoed from a part of the building that should have been empty at this time of night.

The operating rooms.

She passed through a seemingly endless succession of long, pitch-black corridors, and the sound grew louder with each turn. There was no mistaking it now: It was groaning. At first, it was emotionless noise, like white static or the sigh of the wind. A disembodied voice drifting through the halls. But then, as if snapping into consciousness, the voice became more urgent. The sounds seemed to be mutating into a weak, disoriented protest.

Goosebumps prickled the back of her neck as she stood at the intersection of two hallways. Not sure which way to turn, she held her breath and strained to hear. She determined after a few seconds that the sounds were coming from down the left corridor. But when she turned onto it, the groaning got louder. It filled the wing of the building, rising into frantic, throat-tearing screams.

Nancy froze in her tracks and stumbled backward. She turned to run, hating herself more and more with each corner rounded. She ran like all of hell were after her and didn't stop until she reached her room, where she spent the rest of the night wide awake beneath her bed sheets, feeling like a coward.

 **xxxxxx**

A scoop of steaming sunny-side up eggs slid off the metal spatula and onto Nancy's breakfast platter.

"Next," the cook behind the counter hollered. Nancy lifted her food after taking a glass of orange juice in her other hand and shouldered her way through the crowded cafeteria. Glen and Tina were already at their table, forking hash browns into their mouths.

"How's your head, Nancy?" Glen asked as she sat down.

Not sure what he was talking about, Nancy reached up to touch her forehead and felt a throbbing lump.

"Ouch," she said under her breath.

Tina smiled at her sympathetically. "That was a pretty bad fall."

Before Nancy could ask what had happened, she caught sight of a boy sitting a few tables down from them. Amid all the chatter and bustle of the morning, he sat at an empty table in front of an empty tray. His sunken eyes stared straight ahead as if he were unaware of what went on around him. Nancy would have mistaken him for a propped-up corpse if it weren't for the steady rise and fall of his chest and the occasional twitch of his spindly fingers. She looked around to see if anyone else was concerned about him. At every table, kids were talking and play-shoving each other. Some were trying to flirt, while others were locked in hushed arguments. They were all wrapped up in their own business. No one noticed the boy.

She glanced back to her own table as she heard chair legs scraping along the floor. Rod slid into the seat next to Tina, letting an arm fall around her shoulders.

"Good morning, stud," she said with a roll of her eyes.

He was going to say something back, when Nancy spoke up. "Who's that guy over there?" she asked, pointing at the catatonic young man. Rod craned his neck to see, and when he turned back to her, the grave expression on his face was all the answer she needed.

"Jesus, what's wrong with him?" said Tina. Rod didn't reply. He tugged a folded-up piece of paper out of his back pocket and smoothed it flat on the table.

"I took this from the bulletin board in the hallway a few minutes ago. I was gonna wait until after breakfast to show you guys. The nurses must have posted it late last night."

They all leaned in to see. The heading said "Schedule A." Below that, a long list of names and dates were typed out in a small font. The first item read "Murdock, Kevin," followed by yesterday's date. Nancy caught sight of her own name a few slots below his, but that didn't keep her attention long. Everyone's eyes followed Tina's slim finger to the top. Nancy couldn't believe she'd missed it. She stared at the name directly under Murdock's, scheduled for operation tomorrow night:

"Grey, Tina."

.

.

.

 _To be continued…_

* * *

 **A/N: I'll post the next chapter sometime within the next two weeks (later rather than sooner, most likely). If you enjoyed this chapter, or if you loathed it, or if you feel only cold indifference toward it, please let me know with a comment! Reading them always makes me smile, even if it's only a word or two. It's just nice to know I'm not publishing my stories into a void.**

 **Thank you for reading!**


	2. Hush

**A/N: The story summary was a bit too long, so I changed it (in case you were wondering). I wasn't expecting to finish this chapter so quickly, but here it is. Enjoy!  
**

 **And I'd like to give a huge thank you to my two reviewers so far: Darkness Takes Over and a mysterious entity known only as "guest." Thanks, you guys. You rock.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own A Nightmare on Elm Street or any of its characters.**

 **WARNING: CERTAIN CHAPTERS OF THE FOLLOWING STORY WILL CONTAIN GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, AND ADULT LANGUAGE. TO AVOID SPOILERS, THERE WILL NOT BE INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS FOR EACH CHAPTER.**

* * *

 **Chapter Two: Hush**

A light wind pushed the clouds across the blue afternoon sky. Nancy lay with her waves of hair fanned out on the sun-baked grass and her arms spread at both sides. She watched as a large cloud drifted in front of the sun, which broke through it and threw bright rays down onto the courtyard below.

She sat up and turned toward the radio nestled in the green grass as Tina began flipping through the stations. A chopped-up medley of songs blared from the speakers until she settled on David Bowie singing the chorus of "Young Americans" and twisted up the volume dial.

Tina pulled her red Bud Light baseball cap down over her blonde hair, swaying to the rhythm. It mixed with the cacophony of noise from all around the yard. Clusters of kids were scattered around on blankets or leaning against tree trunks. There were plenty of picnic tables for everyone, but most seemed to prefer the grass. Maybe it made them all feel a bit more normal. It did for Nancy.

"Close your eyes," Tina said.

Nancy quirked an eyebrow. "What?"

"Just do it. I have a surprise for you."

With one hand tucked behind her back, Tina grinned at her friend. Nancy smiled up at her. Seeing Tina sober and happy reminded her of when they were little girls. Nancy missed those days, running through Elm Street like it was their own private playground. Back when white picket fences were fortress walls standing between them and the world. Everything had been safe and comfortable, and their futures held nothing but promises. She never would have thought they'd end up in a place like this.

"Come on," Tina said.

"Alright, but it better not be anything gross," Nancy warned her, squeezing her eyes shut. She held out her open palm and fought the urge to cringe. The last time Tina had a "surprise" for her, it had been a used condom, and Nancy had spent half the day scrubbing her hands until they turned red.

"Relax," Tina said. "You're going to love it."

A second later, Nancy felt a small weight drop into her hand and was staring down at a tiny bracelet. It was a purple string of four square beads with the letters T-I-N-A carved onto them.

"Tina, I can't take this; it's yours," she protested. Tina had made that from a bead set at Nancy's fifth birthday party. Just looking at it brought back memories of pink lemonade and vanilla cake, and of the sleepover that night. They'd stayed up long past bedtime, pretending that they were running a jewelry store.

"Keep it. Your birthday was three days ago, and I can't think of anything else to give you," Tina said.

Nancy held it out. "Tina-"

"I won't take it back," she insisted, putting up her hands. "If you don't keep it, it'll get lost in the grass."

Nancy closed her hand around it and leaned forward to pull Tina into a hug. "Thank you. You're the best."

"Of course I am," Tina added with a proud smirk before yanking Nancy off balance. She shrieked, falling onto her back. Tina climbed on top of her. "Ah, This is _much_ more comfortable than the hard ground."

"Get off me," Nancy yelled through her laughter. She shoved her friend away and sat up Indian style. Tina rolled onto her side, propping her head up on the heel of her hand. She smiled as Nancy knotted the bracelet onto her wrist. Clenching one end of the string between her teeth, Nancy tugged it hard to secure it in place.

"Hey, Tina?"

"Yeah?"

"What did you mean before, when you said I fell?" Nancy asked. She didn't remember hitting her head on anything. But she didn't remember going to sleep, either.

Tina looked a little embarrassed. "Well, I don't exactly remember what happened last night. I was sort of…out of it. But Glen told me that you fell and hit your head on the corner of a filing cabinet, and then Rod carried you back to your room."

Nancy nodded. That made the most sense, since nothing that happened after that could have possibly been real. She thought back to that old woman and knew she'd only dreamt of her because of Rod's story. What she didn't understand was why that man with the hat had been there. Or why he had seemed so familiar. It was like when you catch a stranger staring at you in a crowded grocery store, or a movie theater, or at the park, and you could swear you've seen that person before. And you could also swear that they have no interest in picking up groceries or watching a movie, but that they'd come out from wherever they'd been hiding just to see _you_.

The fingers on his hand flashed through her mind, long and pointed like over-grown nails.

"Nancy?" Tina said, tapping the girl on the shoulder. "Is something wrong?"

Nancy shook her head. "No. Nothing."

Tina would have pressed her for a better answer, but she lost interest immediately after she'd glanced up. Nancy followed her gaze. They stared at one of the four inner walls of the red brick building that towered around them. A man was standing by a window on the highest floor of the hospital, surveying the courtyard. Something about him made Nancy feel like a specimen being examined. They couldn't distinguish anything more than the outline of his body behind the glare of the glass windowpane, but they knew who it was. Everyone knew.

He was The Doctor, and that was his office.

Hiding her hands in the sleeves of her grey hoodie, Nancy drew in her knees. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. The man was rigid like a cardboard cutout, but every once in a while his arm moved up to take what might have been a cigar out of his mouth. The movement was mechanical. And Nancy couldn't be sure he was anything more than a machine, since neither she nor anyone she talked to had ever seen him. From what she'd heard, he was the resident surgeon at Westin Hills.

"That guy oversees all the operations here, right?" Nancy asked without looking away from the blurred silhouette.

"As far as I know," Tina replied.

"So whatever happened to Kevin Murdock was-"

"Don't be ridiculous, Nancy," Tina blurted out. "Like Glen said: The guy was already fucked up."

Nancy turned to Tina, searching her eyes. What she saw was uncertainty. "You don't really believe that."

"Yes, I do." Tina folded her arms across her chest.

"But Rod knew him," Nancy said, "and according to him, Murdock wasn't crazy. Not _that_ crazy, anyway."

Tina's will to argue dissipated like vapor. She stared down at her bare feet. "Shut up, Nancy."

"Rod's a jerk but he's not a liar," Nancy insisted.

Bringing her thumbnail to her teeth, Tina tilted her face down and nibbled. "No."

"No what?" Nancy asked.

"No." She shook her head.

"Tina, don't do that. Please," Nancy begged. She watched as her friend's confidence crumbled, denial giving way to doubt and fear. Creases formed between Tina's eyebrows, and a thin sheet of cold sweat chilled her forehead. They sat side by side, their troubled thoughts drowning out the ruckus of laughter from the other kids and the music blaring from the radio. It was a while before Tina spoke again.

"I don't want them to do that to me," she said, on the verge of tears. "I'm not crazy."

Nancy clutched her hand, unsure of what to say. It was clammy and trembling. After a few seconds, Tina leaned forward and put her lips by Nancy's ear. "They wouldn't let me call my mom. I just wanted to talk to her, and they wouldn't let me," she whispered, breaking down into breathless sobs.

"What?" Nancy asked, but the blonde was too choked up to say anything else. Her face hardened into a glare. "Wait here."

She got up and left Tina huddled on the grass. There had been way to much bullshit going on this week, and Nancy was sick of it.

After storming across the yard, she shoved open the doors of the hospital's courtyard entrance. They led into a large room with a neat wrap-around desk centered in the back. An old nurse sat behind it, shuffling papers. She looked surprised as Nancy rushed past her and went to the telephone mounted on the wall beside a line of chairs. Taped over the handle was a small piece of yellow paper with "OUT OF ORDER" written across it in red pen.

"Ma'am," the nurse called to her. Nancy didn't pay the woman any attention and pulled the phone off the hook to cradle it against her ear. She scoffed, hearing a perfectly functional dial tone.

"Ma'am, that phone is out of use. Please put it down," the nurse said in a stern voice.

"I'm making a call," she responded.

The nurse lifted her own personal desk phone and punched a few numbers on the dial pad, then murmured something to whoever was on the other end of the line. She never took her eyes off Nancy, who had begun turning the rotary dial with her fingertip. Her father was the last person she wanted to talk to after what had happened between them, but he needed to know what was going on here. Something wasn't right about this place.

She put in the digits for Sheriff Thompson's direct line and waited through the ringing. Her foot tapped incessantly. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the nurse was off her rolling chair and coming toward her. _Pick up, dad. Please._

Nancy turned back just in time to see a huge pair of rough hands grab the phone away. She kept her grip on it, wrestling the orderly with all her strength. "Let go," she shouted. "Leave me alone."

"You need to step back from this phone right now, ma'am," he said. Another large man in the same blue scrubs came up behind her and seized her arms. She kicked against him, hair lashing in front of her face.

"Why can't we make phone calls? We have parents that are going to be _very_ worried if they don't hear from us," she yelled, and then added in a low, threatening tone, "My dad's a cop."

The men exchanged looks. The one standing in front of her with a razor-burned double-chin and armpit stains was unimpressed. "Good for you," he said. He tossed his head to the right, chin fat giggling. "Take her back to her room, Frank."

"No!" Nancy said. Adrenaline surged through her and she continued thrashing in the man's iron grip. She felt her arms being pulled closer together behind her back, and her feet lifted off the floor. The orderly restraining her wrapped a massive arm around her waist.

"Answer my question: _Why_ _can't we call our parents_?" she insisted. But they ignored her. "You have _no right_ to do this."

She thought she'd heard the man at her back snicker to himself, but couldn't be sure. "Relax," he said into her sweaty hair.

"I'll relax when you put me down," she shot back.

"Not gonna happen. Now be a good girl and close your mouth," he said. "Before you hurt yourself."

"Put me down, God dammit!" she shrieked. Her leg swung back and hit him in the knee, and he doubled over. She was loose, but only for a second. The man in front snatched her wrists and in a flash, the one behind her had recovered. His breathing was heavy and angry.

"Get her ankles, will you?" he said, taking her arms again. She hung sideways between the two of them, still trying to kick her immobilized legs. All her flailing and cursing was useless; they hauled her into the nearest hallway.

Before the doors swung shut after them, she saw Kevin Murdock standing in the open entrance to the courtyard. The bright sun behind him made his hair glow and his face darken. He lifted one of his emaciated fingers to his lips and hushed her.

 **xxxxxx**

They'd taken Tina that night. If there was something Nancy could have done, God knows she would have done it, but it was out of her control. She'd held her ear to the door from inside her bedroom until dawn, waiting for groans and screams. And she waited for nothing. Not a single sound could be heard anywhere in the hospital. It was too quiet-almost like they knew she was listening.

Nancy took a sip from her cup of lemonade, keeping her thoughts to herself and her eyes on Tina. They sat across from each other at their table in the mess hall. Tina had hardly touched her dinner of chicken and corn, which was starting to get cold. The fork lay abandoned on the edge of the plastic plate. She didn't look hungry. She looked like she needed a good night's sleep more than she needed a meal, anyway. Her skin drooped, and faint purple rings had formed under her mirthless eyes.

At the end of the table, Glen was scooping up the rest of his buttered corn and downing his drink. Rod sat beside him, hunched over his untouched meal. He didn't have much of an appetite. Glen lifted the empty platter, glancing over to Tina. "Are you finished? I can take the plate for you," he offered with his hand extended. Tina vaguely registered that someone was talking to her and tilted her face toward him without meeting his gaze. The stiffness of the movement was unsettling. He and Nancy watched as Tina gave a slow nod.

"I'm done, too," Nancy said, rising to her feet. "Let's go take a bath before the shower room is crowded, okay Tina?"

To her surprise, Tina snapped back into consciousness with a smile. "Good idea," she said. Getting out of her seat, she went around the table to hook arms with Nancy. Rod hadn't looked up the entire meal, but now he was staring at his girlfriend. The look of sickening worry plastered on his face faded into confusion and hopefulness. Maybe the operation had exhausted Tina, and she just needed time to recover, Nancy thought.

Maybe she was alright.

 **xxxxxx**

A flow of warm water rushed over Nancy's face and down her body, swirling into the drain below. She cradled herself in her arms as billows of steam filled the small walk-in shower. The cap on a shampoo bottle in the shower next-door popped open, and she heard Tina squeeze some of the contents out before closing it again. Nancy did the same, lathering the tiny puddle of gel into her dark hair. She scrubbed her fingers on the back of her head and tipped her face up to the rushing water.

Through the suds that had filled her ears, she heard Tina open her bottle again and start squeezing out more shampoo. And more. And more. A minute later, there was only the hollow sucking sound of the empty bottle being compressed over and over. Nancy wanted to say something, but instead she stood under the water with her mouth closed and her hair washing flat against her cheeks.

Then the bottle flew out from Tina's shower. Nancy heard it hit the wall on the other side of the room and crack before clattering to the floor. The bar of soap in her hand slipped loose as she tensed up from the shock. "Tina?" she called. "Is everything alright over there?"

There was no answer for a long time. Then she heard a low, guttural laugh that couldn't have belonged to Tina. Or any other girl. It floated up with the steam from Tina's shower. Nancy's brow creased and for a while, she was too scared to pull back her curtain and see who was out there. She moved back behind the flow of hot water, her body pressing flat against the smooth tiles on the wall. Again, she called, "Tina?"

 _Don't be such a fucking coward, Nancy,_ she told herself. She tore aside her wet curtain and stepped out. Steam ghosted around her as she approached the neighboring shower. With a trembling hand, she clutched the sheet of worn plastic and dragged it off to the left. The rings securing it to the metal bar overhead clinked together as it bunched.

Tina was standing alone beneath the showerhead with her back toward Nancy. The spray of water splashed down onto her, droplets rolling over her naked body. A few of her lower ribs were visible and the bumps of her spine stuck out from her hunched back. Her skin was purple and blue, and Nancy didn't know why until she reached forward to tap her. Her hand reeled back from the ice cold water.

"Tina, what the hell is wrong with you?" Nancy said, darting forward to twist off the knobs. She cringed and tried to shield her own naked skin from the cold until the flow was cut. A clear trickle dripped from the hollow showerhead.

Taking Tina's shoulders, Nancy turned her around and rubbed her thin arms. "You're freezing," she said. She wrapped the mute girl into a hug in an attempt to warm her, then led her back to the other shower. She helped Tina inside and saw that her blonde hair was caked with thick globs of shampoo. She worked her fingers through it under the water, letting the white suds and bubbles wash out between them.

"You scared the shit out of me, Tina," Nancy said as she wrung the last bit of shampoo from the short blond hair. "Why won't you say anything? Hello?"

Tina looked back over her shoulder with a puzzled expression. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"You know what I mean," Nancy said. "You were giving yourself hypothermia in there. You chucked your shampoo bottle into the wall, for Christ's sake."

Tina shook her head, looking even more confused. "No, I didn't. Why would I do that?"

Nancy pulled their curtain back just enough for them to see out. The empty blue bottle was still lying on the floor, split open down the center of the label.

"I didn't do that. And I didn't run a cold shower, either. I think I'd remember something like that, Nancy." she insisted.

"Never mind," Nancy said. "It doesn't matter."

They rinsed off and got out to find their towels, which were folded and stacked on the edge of the counter beside the sinks. Nancy took the top one and handed it to Tina, and then grabbed one for herself. She shook it open and pressed it into her face, patting it dry. She dried down her chest and back before bending over to dry her legs.

When she straightened up, she saw Tina out of the corner of her eye still holding the folded towel. Beads of cold water clung to her skin as it turned purple again, but she didn't appear to notice. She was staring at Nancy with a blank expression. Watching her. Only it didn't feel like Tina. It was as if her eyes were little glass lenses through which someone else was looking.

 **xxxxxx**

The edge of the mattress creaked as Nancy slumped down onto it and rested her forehead in the palm of her hand. The sun was sinking through the darkened outlines of oak trees in the window behind her, lighting the undersides of the drifting clouds above. She sat still in the dark room long after the sun had vanished into a deep orange horizon.

The ceiling light switched on, and she looked up as Glen was shutting the door behind him. "Hey, Nance," he said. She flashed him a taunt smile, pushing aside the pillows to make room next to her. He settled in, but for a while he only stared down into his hands. "Still worried about Tina?"

She nodded. The movement was almost difficult, as if the strength had been sapped from her body. "I don't know what to do. Or if there's anything I _can_ do."

"I hate to say this," he whispered, wrapping her hand in his, "but we can't fix Tina. I mean, you know why she's here. She needed help, and that's what the doctors are doing."

She pulled her hand away. "You don't understand, Glen. There's something _wrong_ with her."

"I do understand. Tina and Kevin both needed treatment, and-"

"And what about us?" she said, voice tight with frustration. "Why are our names on that list?"

"Well-"

"Are you saying we're crazy, too?"

He seized her shoulders and turned her to face him. "No. God, no." he said. "We're not."

"Then how can you be so calm about this?" she asked. After a stretch of silence, he placed a hand on the back of her head and pulled her into a hug. Her face nestled into his shoulder as he stroked her hair back from her forehead.

"The doctors understand things that we don't, Nancy. We just have to trust that they're doing what's best for us."

"But why couldn't we call our-"

She stopped mid-sentence as Glen heaved a sigh. "I don't know," he said. His fingers brushed along the side of her cheek and under her chin. She tilted her head back to look at him.

"I'm scared, Glen."

He leaned down a few inches and kissed her. "Don't be. I'm right here."

All was still and quiet in the bedroom. They remained seated on the edge of the bed with Nancy leaning on Glen, her arms wrapped around him like he were a bobbing buoy on a vast and turbulent ocean. Even when Max rapped on the door from the hall to remind them to get to their own rooms for lights out, it took them a while to separate. But eventually, Glen stood up and left, and then Nancy was sitting alone again.

The next time the door opened, the ceiling light shut off and Tina was the one who stepped through. She smiled at Nancy before switching on the bedside lamp and went to her dresser to pull open the top drawer. Taking out a plastic green comb, she began brushing through the tangles in her hair. Her blonde locks reflected the dim, yellow light as they passed through the wide teeth. She finished a few minutes later and put the comb away before climbing into her creaking bed. Nancy slid under her covers and lay on her side. She watched as Tina reached for the string on the lamp that sat on the nightstand between them.

"Goodnight, Nancy," she said before shutting the light. "Sweet dreams."

A thick shroud of darkness settled over the room. Nancy snuggled down into her pillow and shut her eyes with a sigh. Today had been exhausting for her, and her mind ached for rest. But every few minutes, as if she couldn't control herself, she snuck a quick peek over to Tina. She felt silly for being scared of her, and yet couldn't shake the feeling that she would look and see the girl standing over her with that empty expression on her face. Those unfamiliar, camera-lens eyes.

But Tina never once got out of bed, and as Nancy's vision adjusted to the darkness, she clearly saw the girl asleep and on the verge of snoring. Nothing to worry about.

Nancy relaxed and rolled onto her other side, curling up her knees. Her body sunk into the comfort of the thin mattress. A pleasant fog spread over her consciousness, and she was almost surrendered to sleep when she heard something strange. Her eyes opened immediately.

From far out in the hallways came a quiet squeaking sound. She'd heard it before: the squeak of turning gurney wheels. They were small and thin, and they rattled over the tiles like timpani drums. The noise grew more distinct as it got louder.

And closer.

There wasn't a chance in hell that Nancy was getting out of bed to investigate anymore suspicious noises. She pulled the covers around her face and waited. A knot of dread clenched her stomach, and soon the wheels were rolling straight down her hallway. Every once in a while a wheel would jam, and she would hear the clatter of rumbling metal. It picked up speed until it was barreling down the hall, and the wheels were squeaking madly like a pit of rats set on fire.

And then it slowed down. Right outside her door.

She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away, pretending to be asleep. Sweat was beading at her hairline as the wheels turned in through her bedroom doorway and rolled across the floor. The rolling slowed down even more now, and every drawn-out turn of the wheel made a slow screech. It creaked to a stop alongside her bed.

Her neck was stiff with resistance as she turned to see what was behind her. It wasn't a gurney at all. It was a rolling steel utility table, standing alone in the room. Spread out on its surface were gleaming metal surgical instruments of every kind: scissors, scalpels, hooked needles, ice-picks, retractors, rib cutters, and some tools that she'd never seen before. Tools that looked like they'd been stolen from a torture chamber.

She looked to the door; it was closed, but no one else was in the room except her and Tina. It was as if a phantom had pushed the table through the halls and abandoned it at her bedside. She sat up to get a better look and was slammed back down onto the bed. Only it didn't feel like a bed anymore. It was hard and cold, and when she turned her head to the side, she saw her own reflection looking back up at her from the metal operating table. She felt rough hands grab onto her wrists and pin them above her head.

"Help!" she screamed, thrashing against the strong grip. Her bedroom disappeared around her like scenery in a stage play, leaving only grimy cement walls draped in sheets of blood-smeared plastic. Tina was gone.

Leather straps cut into her wrists, and her kicking legs were bound to the bottom corners of the table by an invisible force. The person behind her walked around to stand at her feet. The only thing she could make out through the shadows was a figure clothed in a long operating gown. She strained to see more, and she did.

On his head was the black outline of a fedora. It was him.

Glaring white lights flooded over her from above, blinding her with wide purple splotches as her pupils constricted and struggled to adjust. A man towered above her, his skin burnt deep through the layers of flesh and muscle. Scar tissue split and tore around his stretching grin.

"Who the fuck are you?" she yelled. "What's going on?"

He placed a glove-clad hand over his chest, tapping the long blades. He frowned. "Aww, what's the matter? You don't remember me, little Nancy?"

Her breath hitched at the sight of his claw, and he let out a gravelly chuckle. He traced the tip of his index blade along the contour of her thigh. "I guess Uncle Freddy will have to _make you_ remember."

Without a second's pause, he ripped at her white pajama pants and tore them away. She pressed her bare thighs tightly together, straining to keep them closed as he slipped a hand between them. He pulled one leg off to the side and climbed on top of her. The surgical gown was gone now, and in its place he wore a tattered red and green striped sweater and black trousers. She threw her head off to one side as he lowered his face to hers. He whispered to her with the smell of smoke on his breath. "You were always the softest little piglet."

"Get the hell off me," she cried. But all her struggling only made him laugh.

She felt her legs being pried wider while Freddy stared down at her with a smirk. He ground himself against her cotton panties and released her legs to run a hand over her chest. She glared at him, simmering with rage.

"I don't know who the fuck you think you are, but if you touch me, I'll kill you, you fu-"

His hand slid straight to her throat and clamped down. "Shut up, bitch," he snarled before backhanding her across the cheek. Drops of blood swelled from a cut below her eye. "I'm here on business. We'll have plenty of time to play later."

He reached up to her pinned arm and grabbed onto it. She couldn't see what he was doing, but she didn't have to. She felt the cold steel blade cut into the underside of her arm below the elbow. Her teeth gnashed and her brow contorted from the pain. "Stop," she screamed.

"Don't interrupt me, cunt," he barked, slicing up her arm. Blood trickled over her skin, dripping onto the floor in dime-sized splatters. When he was finished, he sat up and admired his handiwork. "All done," he said, grinning at her with his rotted teeth. "Wanna see?"

Before she could respond, he cut the straps holding her and she pulled her throbbing arm in to cradle it. A long row of parallel cuts shredded its tender underside. They covered all the way up to her wrist, where blood was bubbling out at an alarming speed.

"Nice and neat," he cooed. "Because that's how you whores are doing it these days, and it's important to be authentic."

Her heart pounded harder as her blood pressure dropped, and she scrambled off the table. She ran out the door, not looking back as he called after her. "Hide and seek, huh?"

Freddy's heavy, black work boots dropped to the floor, his finger-knives twitching with anticipation. "Alright. Ready or not," he growled, "here I come."

 **xxxxxx**

Nancy hadn't been prepared for what lay outside that doorway. She was balancing on a narrow catwalk with flimsy iron guardrails on each side, and the metal grating left painful imprints on the soles of her bare feet. Through the slots, she saw the harrowing drop to the cement floor. She gripped the railing to steady herself, and it creaked and shook under her weight.

In the distance, she could make out a set of stairs leading down off the bridge. Her stomach fluttered with every step as sweat and blood mixed in the palm of her hand. A sound like steel nails dragged across a blackboard reverberated around in the darkness. When she turned to check behind her, her hand slipped off the rail over a smear of her own blood. She fell forward into the catwalk, which swung from side to side at the sudden weight-shift. Her hands trembled as she clung on for her life. It slowed to a gentle rocking, but she didn't attempt to get up again until she heard his gravely laughter close by.

Rushing down the stairs, she landed onto a metal platform with a ladder extending down from a hole in the center. She crawled to it and lowered her sore foot to the first rung. It rattled but held up to the strain, and soon she was on solid ground.

She hadn't noticed before how hot this place was. The air was scorching and hard to breathe, and her thin, sweat-soaked nightshirt clung to her body. She wandered through the shadowy boiler room, scanning her surroundings for any sign of that man. Her head was spinning as blood continued to pulse out of her arm. She clutched the wounds to stop the bleeding, but it continued to drip out from between her fingers. Her face had taken on a dangerous pallor.

She stopped in front of a huge cast-iron furnace. A fire roared to life inside it, lashing against the back of the door. Small flames licked out through four vertical slots above the latch. The glow of the writhing flames locked within the boiler sparked one of her vaguest and deepest memories. She'd been here before. As she started backing away, footsteps closed in from behind her. An arm reached around to grab her and hold her still, and the flat side of a steel blade stroked down her cheek.

And then his name flashed through her mind in grainy black letters like newsprint.

Freddy Krueger.

Nancy shot up in bed screaming. Blood had soaked the sheets, turning them black and cold. She touched her arm to be sure that she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. Streams of blood still coursed from her sliced wrist, and it coated over the blood that had already dried. Tina stirred from her sleep, but she didn't move a muscle when she looked over to her friend. She lay still and watched.

Seconds later, the door to their room busted open, and a nurse rushed in with three orderlies in tow. They went to her bedside and the nurse crouched down to examine Nancy's arm. "Another attempt," she said before glancing over her shoulder at the men. "Call the doctor. Now."

"Miss, I didn't-" Nancy tried to protest, but they ignored her.

The nurse pulled open the nightstand drawer and took out a first aid kit. She popped the plastic latches, taking a roll of white gauze from inside. With a grip like a wrench, the nurse began wrapping the cuts. Spots of blood soaked through, but she continued around and around.

Nancy cringed at the pressure, and she looked up at a lanky orderly with freckles on his nose as he titled his head down and to the side. He murmured into a little black radio pinned to his jacket. A fuzzy voice responded to him, too muffled for her to hear. He gave a brief reply and nodded before releasing the side button.

"What did he say?" asked the nurse, still dressing Nancy wounds. "Does he want to see her?"

The orderly nodded again, and what he said next made Nancy's stomach drop.

"He wants her in solitary. Reschedule her procedure for the next available time slot."

.

.

.

 _To be continued..._

* * *

 **A/N: I know you might be wondering what the hell is going on in this story. But you don't get to know (yet). All I can say is that I'm evil and I have crazy plans for where this tale is going. If you hang in there, I guarantee you that the answers to your questions will be worth the wait. *Laughs maniacally***

 **Thanks for reading this far. Please review! :D**

 **FURTHER DISCLAIMERS: I DON'T OWN THE SONG "YOUNG AMERICANS" BY DAVID BOWIE, OR BUD LIGHT BEER. (R.I.P. David)  
**


	3. Another One for Fairview

**A/N: Thank you to Reimusha and Darkness Takes Over for reviewing chapter two! You guys keep me going! Enjoy the story.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own A Nightmare on Elm Street or any of its characters.**

 **WARNING: CERTAIN CHAPTERS OF THE FOLLOWING STORY WILL CONTAIN GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, AND ADULT LANGUAGE. TO AVOID SPOILERS, THERE WILL NOT BE INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS FOR EACH CHAPTER.**

* * *

 **Chapter three: Another One for Fairview**

Nancy hadn't known how lonely it could be in a full house until her parents first mentioned the word divorce. She was only six at the time, but even at that age she had sensed the tension in the air. Her father had started sleeping on the couch, and no one spoke at dinner. Neither one of her parents had been willing to move out and give up their daughter. Out of pure stubbornness, they had lived together until the custody hearings started.

That was when things got ugly.

Mr. and Mrs. Thompson had always tried to keep their fights secret from Nancy, but anger can only simmer for so long before it starts to boil. And it boiled loud. For the last few weeks, it was every night: Nancy would lay with her blankets cocooned around her, watching the crack in her bedroom door. Listening to the shouts and curses from downstairs. People weren't meant to live like that. Something had to change, and she remembered the day it had.

The start of Summer vacation was only a few weeks away, and dandelions were popping up all over Elm Street into the warm, humid air. She'd stepped off the school bus at three o'clock, cutting across the lawn to her front door. The suitcases by the kitchen table had excited her at first; she thought maybe they were going on a surprise trip. Donald had promised to take her to Disney World someday. But those bags were only packed for one person, and it wasn't her. And no matter how much she sobbed and screamed and clung to his knees, she couldn't make him stay.

Not long after the divorce was finalized, her mother had gotten her a pet rabbit to keep her company. Marge had been beaming as she handed her six-year-old daughter the cardboard box with air-holes poked into the sides, but Nancy remembered feeling oddly cheated: She lost her daddy and all she got in his place was a nasty little thing that bit her the first time she tried to touch it. She would have liked to say that that was the reason she hated it, but that would be a lie. She hated it the very second she saw it. She hated its pink eyes; she hated its twitching nose; she hated the way it sat there and pretended that it could _ever_ be enough to make up for the life she was missing out on.

And as soon as that hatred had festered enough, the nightmares came. It was so much bigger in her nightmares. It walked like a man with its long limbs and jagged buck-teeth. And it was always waiting for her to touch it so it could bite her.

Even after she'd begged her mother to take it back to the pet store, it still came for her every time she fell asleep. Those nights were filled with a different kind of screaming than what the walls of fourteen twenty-eight Elm Street were accustomed to. Marge had to cradle her at two, three, four o'clock in the morning until she dozed off again. Sometimes she would give up and let Nancy sleep on what used to be Don's side of the bed.

One of those nights in particular stuck out to Nancy even after all these years, because it was the night she learned that she wasn't as helpless as she'd thought. Marge had held out a felt-tipped black marker to the sniffling girl, and taught her a trick: _Write numbers on your fingers, sweetheart. When you fall asleep, you'll see that the numbers are gone and realize that its just a dream. Then you'll wake up._

It had worked when she was a child. And it would have to work now. That's what she told herself as she lay curled up on the padded floor of the solitary confinement cell at Westin Hills, marking her knuckles with those same numbers. The soft, felted point was easy on her skin, and each digit she wrote was bold enough to be seen in the meager light.

She blinked a few times, struggling against the sedatives they'd injected into her arm. The cap for the marker snapped shut under her thumb, and she shoved it back into the pocket of her hoodie. She spread her fingers and examined the numbers. They were all in order - one through ten.

She heard a click and looked up.

"How you doing, kiddo?" Max said as he opened the cushioned cell door. He leaned against the doorframe, his large chest nearly filling it.

Nancy tried to smile while stifling a yawn. "Never better."

He walked into the cell, locking it behind him. Nancy propped herself up against the wall as he crouched down on his haunches in front of her. His kind brown eyes said two things: I know you're hiding a magic marker, and you can keep it, because I'm here for something more important.

"You already know what I'm gonna ask," he said. Max was the only hospital employee who didn't treat her like an animal, but all the respect she had for him couldn't wipe the look of disdain from her face.

"Yeah. So don't bother."

"It's my job to bother," he said. "Why'd you do it, Nancy? You're too smart to be doing that shit."

She pulled her bandaged arm close to her chest and cupped a hand over it. "Who says I did it?"

"Nancy-"

"Stop. Don't you dare start acting like them," she said, throat tight with anger and desperation.

He sighed and dragged a hand over his scruffy beard. "Okay. So you didn't do that to yourself. "

"That's what I said."

"Then who did?" he asked. "Tina? There wasn't even a speck of blood on her."

"Tina didn't do anything," she said, remembering how the blonde had watched her bleed and scream with an expression of complete apathy. She hadn't done anything, and that was a problem.

"Tell me who hurt you," Max said. His brow sunk into a no-nonsense glower. He looked like a brown bear waiting to maul whoever messed with one of his cubs.

"If I told you, you'd think I was insane," Nancy insisted.

He motioned to the room around them, raising an eyebrow. "I've dragged you into this room a dozen times, I've buckled you into a strait-jacket, and I've seen you getting sedatives shot up your ass, and I still don't think you're crazy. So try me."

"Fine," she said before firing him a warning glare, "but don't forget what you just said."

Silence hung over the cell for a while as he waited for her to continue.

She swallowed a lump. "It happened while I was asleep. When I woke up, the cuts were on my arm."

"Somebody snuck into your room and did all that while you were snoozing, Nancy?" he asked, eyes narrow with confusion. "You must be one hell of a heavy sleeper."

"No, you don't understand-the man in the dream did it," she said. Her fingertips trembled, and she curled them into her palm so he wouldn't notice. Distressed lines wrinkled her forehead.

"Maybe you just dreamt about someone hurting you because you were feeling the cuts. Like when my dog sneaks into my bed at night and licks my face, and I start dreaming it's Pamela Anderson," he explained, then snapped his mouth shut like he wished he had used a different example.

"It wasn't like that," she said, becoming frantic. "Please, Max. If I fall asleep in here, he'll come back. You need to get me out-"

He put up a hand. "Don't ask me that. You know I can't do something like that."

She slumped lower against the wall, realizing how useless it was to try to make him understand the danger she was in.

"Just forget it," she mumbled, shaking her head. "I knew you wouldn't believe me."

"I believe that you didn't hurt yourself, if you say you didn't. But you're telling me Mr. Sandman took a knife to you? You got to know how that sounds, Nancy."

She looked off to the side. "I said forget it."

"Hey, cheer up," he said as he play-punched her in the shoulder. She teetered off balance and braced her palms on the floor. "You won't be so grumpy when you see what I'm gonna do to the sorry bastard after I catch him. I might even get a laugh out of you."

The corners of her lips started to curl, and she fought to suppress it.

"See? You're smiling already just thinking about it," he said. He ruffled her hair before standing back up, and her quirk of a smile faded. She couldn't expect him to take her word for what happened. If things were reversed, she wouldn't have offered him any help against some imaginary dream pervert with an industrial-strength manicure, either. This was a war she had to fight on her own.

"Before I go, do you need anything?" Max asked. "You hungry?"

She shook her head. "No. But I did drink a lot of water before bed, and they threw me straight in here after I woke up, so…"

"I'll get you a bedpan," he said as he reached for the door handle.

"But Max," she whined, "that's gross."

He glanced back over his meaty shoulder, pulling the door open. "No, that's hospital policy. You don't leave this room."

"Can't I use the toilet like a human being? Just this one time?" she pleaded. Max seemed to be considering it for a few seconds, thinking about the rough night she'd had and the rougher day that lay ahead for her. All she wanted was for him to give her a break. Let her keep some shred of dignity.

He let out a defeated sigh. "Alright. But let's make it quick, okay? They could fire my ass for this."

He held the door open wider and tossed his chin toward it, signaling her through. She stood up on shaky legs and grabbed the side of her head as her vision split into double. Everything in her line of sight blurred and skipped like a scratchy film. She waited for both Maxes to line up again before stepping out in front of him.

"Careful," he said as he placed a hand on her arm to steady her.

"It's the damn drugs," she grumbled. They walked along an empty white hall with only a few closed doors on either side of them. The panels of ceiling lights reflected off the linoleum floor in glaring streaks, making Nancy squint until her fatigued eyes adjusted.

He chuckled. "At least you ain't in Fairview. They triple-up the dose for those poor suckers - and they have to. If they weren't high, they'd all be killing each other."

"How do you know?"

"I used to work there," he said, and his voice became somber. "Trust me, Nancy: this old snake pit we're in ain't so bad. You don't wanna know some of the things that go on across town."

She gave a cynical laugh, pushing open the bathroom door as they reached it. "You're a true optimist."

"I try," he said with a grin.

Nancy entered the bathroom and locked herself in the first stall she reached, collapsing onto the toilet lid. She raked her fingers through her hair. If only it could have been one of the other orderlies waiting outside. If it were someone other than Max, the next few minutes wouldn't have to be so hard.

But no one else would have let her out of the quiet room. It had to be him.

He was facing away from the restroom door as Nancy pushed it open. His gaze bounced back and forth from one end of the hallway to the other, watching out for any staff members that might come their way. He heard her walking up from behind him but didn't expect her to do what she did. He never even turned around.

The toilet tank lid swung hard into the back of his head. He hit the floor as limp as a rubber suit, blood tricking down his neck. A hairline crack had splintered through the bloodstained ceramic cover which hung at her side. She stood over him with her feet spaced apart and her shoulders slumped from dizzying exhaustion.

Nancy dropped the lid and fell to her knees. She reached into her pocket for the magic marker, thumbing off the cap. After scribbling the word "sorry" onto the back of his hand, she leaned down and left a kiss on his cheek.

He would hate her when he came to, but that was something she'd have to live with.

 **xxxxxx**

Running quietly was impossible with her sneakers on, and Nancy had to stop and bend down to slip them from her feet. Her socks rolled inside-out as she peeled them off and stuffed them into the toes of her shoes. She knotted the worn-out laces together and hurled them into an adjacent corridor, watching them spin through the air before they tumbled to the floor. Then she darted off in the other direction. That ought to confuse the staff when they start searching for her.

She wanted to go straight to Glen, but Rod's room was closer. Her bare feet slapped the tiles as she rushed around a corner and almost hit a steel gurney that had been left against the wall. She weaved around it and continued through the hallways, ducking and hiding whenever any nurses crossed her path.

In less than a minute, she had reached the dormitory wing. The door to Rod's bedroom stood ajar with a grey sock draped over the knob, and she crouched down to peek inside.

Rod sat at the foot of the bed with Tina in his lap, their bodies wrapped as tightly as two bodies could be. His jacket and tee shirt had been tossed into a heap by the oak dresser, and he yanked open the fly on his jeans before pushing them off. The tattered denim bunched like an accordion around his hairy ankles. Breathless panting filled the room as Tina's legs curled around his waist, locking them together. He groaned softly with one hand on her thigh and the other tangled into her blonde hair.

"You've been so quiet lately, babe," he whispered into her ear. "Are you mad at me? Hmm? Giving me the silent treatment?"

Tina responded by grabbing his chin and closing her mouth over his.

This was the last thing Nancy wanted to see, but she hesitated to interrupt them because of Tina. She wasn't sure if she could trust the girl anymore. As Nancy was about to turn away to go find Glen, Rod undid the last button on his girlfriend's shirt and pulled it down her arms. And Nancy froze in place.

The smooth skin on Tina's back had been carved up like a scratching post. Thick lacerations ran from one side to the other, with shorter cuts and stab wounds littered throughout. Some had grown bulging scabs, but the deeper gashes were far from healed. They split open when she hunched over to kiss down the length of Rod's chest. Nancy drew a shaky breath, trying not to make any noise as she stared at the disfigured body.

And then she had to blink, because she thought she saw a fresh cut slice its way across Tina's skin. She squeezed her eyes shut and slapped herself with the back of her hand. Those fucking drugs were messing with her mind. That wasn't possible.

With Rod's face buried into the side of her neck, Tina turned to stare over her shoulder at Nancy. Her lips were spread wide, and Nancy couldn't stop the shudder that wracked her. It was as if someone else were pulling the muscles of her face this way and that way to shape a grotesque smile.

Jolting to her feet, Nancy stumbled backward. Her vision swam and her sense of balance waned. The floor seemed to be slanting beneath her. It threw her onto her back with a loud thud as her skull hit the tiles. Splotches of purple and black swelled and mutated in front of her eyes. She lay sprawled out like a groaning drunk, clutching the sides of her head.

"Hey - what's going on out here?" Rod shouted, slamming the door open against the wall. He looked down at her in nothing but pinstriped boxers. "Nancy?"

He took her arms to hoist her up. Her knees wobbled, but he clutched her shoulders to keep her stable. As his concerned face came into focus, she saw Tina coming up from the blur behind him. The buttons on her blouse had been done up again, but one was in the wrong hole and made a disheveled bump in the fabric.

"Did they let you out of solitary already?" Rod asked.

Nancy said nothing, her gaze darting back and forth between him and the blurry smudge of a girl standing behind him. The sound of people running and shouting echoed up from a nearby hall, and as they got closer, she heard what they were saying. "All hospital staff, be on the lookout for a female escapee. Fifteen years old, brown hair, five-foot-four."

Nancy ripped herself out of Rod's grasp, and he grinned, thrusting a _right-on_ fist into the air. She bolted down to the end of the hall and slipped around the corner just as the orderlies ran up to Rod and Tina.

"Either of you seen Thompson?" one of the orderlies barked, scanning the area with an agitated look in his eyes. Nancy pulled her head back behind the wall. That was the razor-burned man with pit stains who hadn't let her make a phone call yesterday. She held her breath and pressed her back tight against the wall as she listened.

"Nope, haven't seen her," said Rod. Nancy could imagine the arrogant "fuck you" expression that must have been on his face. She smiled.

"She's extremely dangerous," continued the orderly. "If you see anything-"

"She went that way," Tina interrupted in a dry voice.

"Tina, what the fuck?" yelled Rod.

Nancy had no time to wonder why Tina would do something like that. She rushed through the halls as quickly as her foggy mind would allow, hearing the boots of half a dozen orderlies close behind her. She ran down into the abandoned wing of the hospital, and they followed through the decrepit hallways littered with broken glass and dead cockroaches. The men were always just out of sight but close enough to follow the sound of her feet hitting the floor. When she felt like her lungs would explode if she ran for one more second, she slipped behind a creaking door and prayed that they would pass her. The inside of the closet was pitch-black and musky, and she didn't want to know what had been left to rot on the shelves behind her. The men came up the hall seconds later, slowing to catch their breaths.

"Where'd that little bitch go?" one of them growled.

"Did you see what she did to Max?" said another. "Left him in a puddle of blood."

She cringed at the words.

"I saw. Looks like we got another one for Fairview."

A few of them gave humorless laughs before they continued around the corner. Nancy stayed put until she was sure they were gone. She stepped out of the closet and doubled-back the way she'd come, turning down a different hall. The one with the broken light bulbs that hung like daggers from the ceiling.

She looked out each window as she passed it, stirring up dust motes. They swirled through the sunshine pouring in from outside. When she reached the smashed window, she brushed off a few shards of glass that were on the sill and hauled herself up. She crawled through on her elbows and fell out the other side, curling in to cushion the landing.

The grass was still trampled from when the four of them had snuck out last time. Nancy kicked off from the dirt and sprinted toward the tower which stood as high as a mountain in the distance. The thought of climbing the fence into the faculty parking lot and escaping back to the police station crossed her mind, but she resisted the idea. She couldn't leave her friends here with that _doctor_ getting ready to do God knows what to them unless she could bring back help. But no one would believe her about what she'd seen and heard if she left empty-handed.

She was going to need proof.

.

.

.

 _To be continued…_

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 **A/N: Thank you for reading! Please review, and I'll sacrifice three goats in your honor. No, wait - that can't be right. *checks note card* Oh. Oooooh. What I meant to say was, "and I'll send a thank you reply and be very happy."  
No goat-sacrificing. I promise. Please review! :D**


	4. Trial 172

**A/N: Sorry I took so long to update. The plan was to have chapter 4 posted sooner, but I was distracted for a few days because of some bad news. My dog has been sick (pooping blood, barely eating anything we give him), so we took him to the veterinarian. They said he has cancer in his liver and it spread to his lungs, and he's dying. He's been a part of our family for 11 years (since I was 8 years old), and they're saying we have to have him euthanized.**  
 **I don't like to make excuses, but that's the reason why it took me so long to post this (that, and my coursework for school). Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story.**

 **And thank you to Darkness Takes Over for reviewing chapter 3. She has some awesome stories, so be sure to check them out! My pesonal favorites of hers are _I Won't Tell_ , _Fear the Nightmare_ , _Dream Boat_ , _Family Counseling_ , _Reunion_ , and _My Big Krueger Nightmare Wedding_. I know that's a lot of favorites. Shut up. The rest of her stories are awesome, too, but these are the ones I ADORE. **

**Also, thank you to "Freddy K Fan" for reviewing chapters 1 and 2. I couldn't send a thank-you reply because the review was left as a guest, so I'll put it here: THANK YOU FOR REVIEWING! It's readers like you that motivate me to keep writing even when life gets shitty and all I want to do is zombify in front of the television.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own A Nightmare on Elm Street or any of its characters.**

 **WARNING: CERTAIN CHAPTERS OF THE FOLLOWING STORY WILL CONTAIN GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, AND ADULT LANGUAGE. TO AVOID SPOILERS, THERE WILL NOT BE INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS FOR EACH CHAPTER.**

* * *

 **Chapter Four: Trial # 172**

Vodka sloshed around inside the long-necked bottle as Sheriff Thompson tipped it up, putting his lips to the glass mouth. His senses had dulled to the bitter taste and the burning air that puffed from his nostrils. He slipped two fingers under his collar and tugged it loose. Another great fucking day at work, he thought. But the words felt distant, and it gave him the impression that they weren't in his head, but circling around it.

And that was exactly where he wanted them. Out.

He was a mess in uniform, sitting slumped over in the backseat of his own police cruiser with a cold bottle cradled against the side of his head. The zipped-up windbreaker had bunched under his arms as he slid lower on the seat, and it pressed the gold sheriff's star into his chin. He took another swig.

The blue-shuttered windows of 1428 Elm Street stared at him through the windshield like huge, square eyes that never blinked. He remembered the evenings years ago when he'd come home from the station and pull into the driveway like this (except the car wasn't parked crooked like it was now), and Nancy would be perched on the windowsill with a toothless grin. No matter how many times he and Marge had told her not to sit on it, she was always there waiting for him with her tiny hands on the glass pane.

Here he had to stop, because the thoughts were starting to get _inside_ again. And he didn't want them to get back inside. He swallowed another mouthful of booze. It scorched his throat, but didn't stave off the flow of afterimages.

Little Nancy looking through the window. Little Nancy rushing out the front door to say hello to him. He saw her everywhere. That was why he was afraid to go inside.

Glancing down into his lap, he wondered why he was being such a fool. The cuts on her arm couldn't have been an accident. Any other good parent would have done what he did. At least, he hoped that was the truth. Part of him wondered if maybe he had done it to take her from Marge.

The last of the vodka flowed out of the bottle and drained into the pit of his stomach. He left it on the seat beside two crushed beer cans. If sending Nancy away had been the right thing to do, he didn't understand why he couldn't rinse the nasty taste of guilt out of his mouth.

 **xxxxxx**

The people searching the hospital grounds looked like ants to Nancy. She peered down at them from a high window in the tower as they crawled around between the tiny green trees. All of them were wearing white; not a single one was in dark blue. But it was no surprise that the police hadn't been involved, considering who her father was and the questions he would ask.

The afternoon sun glared off every smooth leaf and fluttering blade of grass, and it made her head throb. She squinted, pinching the bridge of her nose. Even if there weren't a pack of orderlies hunting for her, she was too delirious to go anywhere now. She would have to wait until tonight to sneak back in. After taking one last look at the frantic little people, Nancy turned back to the hallway.

She had to stare at her feet to be sure they were touching the ground. The stone floor felt like vapor under her, swirling and dissipating. When she looked back up, the ceiling started to spin as a fit of dizziness seized her. She braced a hand against the wall, and the stone pulsed under her fingertips. It felt alive. It breathed.

The simple act of walking became difficult for her as she stumbled along, leaning on the wall for support. The dull colors of the dusty old hallway turned vibrant to the point that it hurt her eyes to look as they expanded beyond their natural surfaces. A hazy spectrum of violets and greens floated into the air like a halo. She staggered on through the distorted tower and felt the sedatives like hooks in her skin pulling her down into unconsciousness.

The corridor slithered beneath her, and she fell into the wall. Both her hands smacked flat against the stones. She lifted her groggy eyes to her fingers as the black numbers written on her skin began fading in and out.

 _Screech…_

Nancy balled the hand into a fist and swung it into her cheek. "Fuck," she whispered, fighting the urge to collapse. He was coming back, and who knows what those twitchy claws wanted from her this time.

Running made no difference, but she ran anyway. Maybe she thought the adrenaline spike would keep her awake. Doors flew past her as the hall snaked and twisted, drawing her forward.

She slowed down when she felt a sense of clarity return. The motion in the walls and the strange colors were gone. For a few seconds, she almost laughed because she thought she was safe. Then her gaze dropped to her fist, and she saw that the numbers had disappeared.

The ear-splitting sound of steel carving into metal reverberated past her from behind. She spun around, but Freddy wasn't the one standing there.

"I warned you, child," said the old nun. Her white robes looked dingy in this light, draped over her frail body like a funeral gown. The garment didn't swish around her when she stepped forward as it had before; it hung with a weight that looked oppressive on her brittle shoulders.

"What do you want?" Nancy asked, keeping distance between them.

"I want to help you," the woman said. "You don't know where you are."

Nancy glanced over her shoulder to see if Freddy was around. "Yes, I do. I'm in the tower, and I'm asleep."

The old woman's wrinkled eyes showed a hint of pity. "That's not what I meant, dear."

"Then what _did_ you mean?" Nancy asked.

"You need to listen to me carefully, Nancy," the nun said. "This isn't an easy thing to explain to you, but you need to hear it."

"What?"

The woman hesitated, pursing her thin lips. "You think you know what's happening now, but you don't. My son is just using you for-"

The nun threw her head back as she clutched her throat. She dropped to her knees, coughing and sputtering while an unseen hand crushed her windpipe. Her serene eyes were now bulging out of her head. Nancy stood frozen against the wall, staring at the gagging old woman.

"Bitch talks too much," said a familiar, gravelly voice. The first thing Nancy saw in the shadows was the gleam of his blades as he swished them together. Then the flash of his predatory eyes. Freddy strolled past the nun like he didn't notice her, gaze fixed on Nancy.

"Stay the fuck away from me," Nancy shouted. She took a few more steps backward before turning around and bolting down the hallway. She didn't notice it at first, but the floor rolled under her like a treadmill, pulling her back with every step. The same door flew past her again and again. She glanced over her shoulder and was mortified to see that she'd barely moved at all.

Freddy lifted his claw and flicked the blades inward, making the stone floor of the hallway bunch up like a carpet under Nancy's feet. She jumped over the rippling bumps as they came at her in waves. Diving through the next doorway that passed her, she tumbled across the hard floor. Her elbows took the brunt of the impact, throbbing and stinging as she grit her teeth. She rolled out on her back and lifted her head to see if anyone had followed her.

The doorway was clear.

Crawling on her knees, she passed between a sturdy old desk and a row of filing cabinets. The light coming in from the windows was blood red, and it made her skin look like it were roasted raw. She glanced up at the sky, which had turned into a flat-wash of crimson with no clouds or even a sun. She was scared to see what else had changed outside, so she crawled along with her head low.

Past the small archway in the back of the room was a winding staircase that descended into a huge chapel. The tiniest sound echoed up into the dome ceiling. Nancy pulled herself up to her feet and climbed down the steps, clinging to the curved face of the wall. As she slipped off the last step at the bottom, it flattened out like closing mini-blinds. Only smooth stone remained where the stairs had been.

She turned toward the front of the chapel, walking down the center aisle that was flanked on both sides by hard, wooden pews. Sheets of dust had settled over everything, and she swiped a finger over one of the armrests as she passed it. On a platform above the altar stood a simple wooden podium. A stained glass mosaic of the crucifixion was fitted into the wall, bathing the church in a flood of red light.

The lines of the glass picture began to shimmer, and Nancy climbed up onto the platform to inspect it. She walked to the back and reached out, running a hand over the image. When she pulled it away, her palm was smeared in red. Fresh drops of blood swelled from between the pieces of glass. They rolled down to pool along the bottom edge of the window frame, dripping onto the dirty old carpet.

She faced back toward the pews and went rigid from shock. Hanging above the altar from a long rope that had been tied high in the rafters was a figure draped in white robes. The cloth was dyed a deep peach color by the light. Nancy circled around to the front of it and was greeted by the wide, perpetual grin of a skeleton. The tilt of its head gave it a sorrowful look as it seemed to be gazing out over the chapel. Delicate finger bones poked out from the robe sleeves on each side of the body, and its white toes pointed down from loose ankle joints.

Pinned to the garment over the skeleton's chest was a tiny gold name plate with _Amanda Krueger_ engraved across it. As soon as she had read it, an uproar exploded from behind.

The pews were overflowing with filthy, haggard men. Some hadn't shaved in weeks, and others had a beard of foam flowing out of their gaping mouths. They cackled and hollered, occasionally falling sideways onto the benches like overgrown toddlers. One man near the front kept lolling his tongue over his bottom lip as he stared at the image of the crucifixion on the wall.

"Hope you don't mind," said Freddy as he leaned his elbow onto the podium behind her, "but I brought a few friends with me. They've been good boys, and they deserve a treat."

The men straightened up in unison, locking their eyes on the altar. One by one, they rose to their feet and started walking towards Nancy like a drove of zombies. They surrounded the platform. Nancy would have run the other way if it weren't for Freddy, who was tapping his blades on the edge of the podium with a wicked glint in his eyes.

She cringed as the horde of lunatics crowded in close enough for her to smell their putrid breath. They pushed past her, reaching up for the hanging body. The first three men that grabbed onto it yanked it down from the cord, which snapped at the knot high above and lashed through the air as it fell. Coils of worn-out rope smacked into the floor like a giant dead snake. The men stepped over it, encircling the body.

They tore at its robes with their gnarled hands and ripped the cloth away in strips. Nancy could only watch as they threw the garment aside and each staked his claim to a piece of the skeleton. They shoved their hands into their trousers, pulling out throbbing erections. One of the men slid himself into the ribcage, another into the eye socket. As the mob crowded around the body, Nancy heard a woman screaming and sobbing. She saw the writhing skeleton of Amanda Krueger in flashes through occasional gaps between the men. It cried out for help, unable to defend itself. Thick strings of semen were draped over the bones like cobwebs, shaking loose as hips pounded into her from all sides. The skull held no expression, but Nancy saw agony deep within the one unmolested socket.

"Tell them to stop!" she shouted at Freddy, who was watching the spectacle with amusement.

He smirked. "Make me, bitch."

She glared at him and rushed into the crowd of lunatics, shoving them out of the way as she tried to reach Amanda. But with each man she pushed aside, it felt like two more took his place, drawing her deeper into a mire of human quicksand. Amanda sunk beneath the pile of sweating bodies until only a skeletal hand stuck out from the tangle of thrusting flesh. And then one of the men pulled it under.

Nancy's head jerked backward as someone fisted her hair. She was dragged out of the crowd and thrown against the back wall, beneath the stained glass window. She curled onto her side, looking up as Freddy stalked toward her. His burnt skin looked like it was on fire in the red glow. The fedora's rim cast a dark shadow to the tip of his scarred nose, and his eyes shone from beneath it when he tilted his head to the side. "You didn't think you were gonna miss out on all the fun, did you?"

She sat up with her back against the wall. "Not one step closer," she warned. But her threats had no teeth, and Freddy wasn't impressed. He moved in and stood over her.

Amanda's screams still echoed through the chapel, mixing with the grunting and groaning of the men. Freddy stooped down to tuck Nancy's hair behind one ear in a mockingly affectionate way, and she seized his hand to crunch down on it.

"You cunt," he roared, clutching at her arm with his claw. The thin razors dug into her flesh. He squeezed her throat with his punctured hand and pulled his claw back, preparing to strike. But he never got the chance. She blinked out.

A second later, she was lying flat on her stomach in one of the tower's winding hallways. She sat up, noticing from a quick peek out the window that it was nighttime. She must have been asleep for a few hours. The thick fog over her mind had lifted, leaving a keen and composed determination in her blue eyes.

 **xxxxxx**

Under the cover of night, Nancy slipped out from between the tower doors and slunk from tree to tree all the way back to the hospital. Sneaking back in would be easy since no one was around. The staff must have given up the search for her after their dayshifts ended. Dangerous female escapee? Not as important as their late-night sitcoms and beauty sleep.

The smashed window was up ahead, and she smiled to herself as she approached it. There might as well have been a welcome mat laid out on the trampled grass. But the closer she got to the window, the more her smile wavered. She stopped in front of the building, placing her hands against the thick plate of glass.

They hadn't found her. But they had found her only way back in.

As hard as she pushed against the glass, it wouldn't budge. It was freshly installed and reinforced. She was locked out.

Tipping her head all the way back, she looked up at the mountainous building in front of her. Roughly laid layers of brick and mortar towered into the sky with the moon peaking out from behind it. Westin Hills seemed as impenetrable as a fortress. Keeping her neck craned, she began to circle the building and survey it for any weak points.

Her search didn't yield much. Every window she looked at was intact, and every wall of the hospital seemed higher and flatter and even more impossible to mount than the last. When she reached the front of the building, she had to wait with her back against the bricks behind the main staircase as two nurses walked out of the entrance. They were cackling and shoving each other over some guy named Jerry, and the younger one kept asking the other, "how big? how big?"

Nancy rolled her eyes. After they had turned into the faculty parking lot and driven out in separate cars, Nancy stepped back to see the front face of the building. Again, everything looked well-built and solid. She glanced from window to window, starting with the lowest, and counted them off.

No. No. No. No…

She paused and squinted. One of the highest windows to the left of the entrance had a hairline crack running through it. It split in opposite directions halfway down the glass, separating the windowpane into three parts that were just waiting to be smashed in.

Gripping the ledge of one of the lowest windows, she was about to lift herself up when she heard more people coming out through the entrance. She slipped into the shadows beside the staircase again and waited for them to pass. A man and a woman walked out in the direction of the parking lot, and Nancy scoffed as the man curled an arm around the nurse's waist.

God damn it. This area couldn't have been more high-traffic if they'd paved a highway through it.

She hoisted herself up to the first window with a plan to reach the top and be out of view before the next interruption. The bricks were like sandpaper on her fingertips. Her bare feet caught the ledge, giving her hands the freedom to dig into the spaces between the bricks higher up. She clung to the flat surface as her toes left the security of the window. The next brick she grabbed jiggled loose and slipped out from the wall, but she clutched the rectangular hole that it left behind and didn't look down. She knew if she looked down she was screwed. Even thinking about the height she had climbed to made her palms sweat.

She ripped her thoughts away from that topic and focused on getting closer to the cracked window. It didn't look that far away anymore, and she would be there in less than a minute-

She froze. The entrance was opening again, letting out a chorus of laughter from a small group of orderlies clocking out for the night. They shuffled down the stone steps, and before Nancy could stop herself, she was already looking down at them. One solid heartbeat pulsed through her. She felt the blood draining from her limbs as they started to tremble. Her hands tingled and the tops of the men's heads started to shrink, getting farther and farther away.

If she fell from this height, there would be nothing left of her but a splatter on the cement.

A small whimper escaped her.

"What was that?" one of the men asked, looking around.

"What was what, you idiot?" the blonde one said. "I didn't hear anything."

"Shut the fuck up and listen. It sounded like a girl."

Nancy reached across to the wall beside her, scaling to the left toward the corner of the building. Her numb hands protested every brick they grabbed, but she pushed herself to keep moving.

"I swear I heard a girl." the man said.

"You don't think it's the one that got out earlier, do you?"

"It might be."

"She'd be long gone by now. Why the hell would a patient stick around? It's not like the fences are topped with coils of barbed wire."

"Maybe they should be," the other laughed. "They're as bad as criminals in here, anyway."

"I'm glad you're not in charge, Frank."

As she reached out to take hold of another brick, she could already feel it starting to come loose. She pushed her palm flat against it, holding her body weight with one hand. The muscles in her fingers cramped and twisted, screaming for relief from the strain. She left the faulty brick in place and grabbed a different one. Hugging the corner, she slipped around to the darker side of the building.

The men hung around for a minute longer, shooting the breeze and complaining about their wives. One kept insisting that he heard something, and the others insisted even more strongly that he was an idiot. Or that he'd been working too many shifts. Or both.

When they were gone, Nancy resumed the climb on the front wall. Her slick palm skidded over the first brick she grabbed, grating red crumbs into the sensitive skin. She hissed from the pain as flecks of blood rose to the surface. She swung her stinging hand up and gripped the bottom ledge of the window. Then came the other hand, and she pulled herself up as her toes pushed off against the wall. Her legs dangled for a few seconds, but soon she was sitting on the ledge with her head canted back on the glass. Her chest heaved and her nerves were spiked, begging for a second of rest. She couldn't give herself that, though. Staff members could be coming out that door down there any minute, and what would she say if they looked up? Hi, I just bludgeoned an orderly and escaped so I could enjoy this lovely view?

Taking a deep breath to prepare herself, she smashed her elbow through the windowpane. Shards of glass scattered across the floor inside with a tinkling sound like tiny silver bells. She climbed in through the frame and nudged a few pieces of glass out of the way before lowering her feet to the tiles.

On a small cot in front of her lay an unconscious teenaged boy. A long, curling tube connected the crook of his elbow to the IV drip standing beside the bed. Dark bruises had stained the skin over both his eyes like a mask, making him impossible to identify. As she stared at him, she thought maybe she'd seen him around the courtyard or in the cafeteria sometime.

She dusted a couple of glass chunks off his sheets and left him in the dark recovery room, hoping that the surgeon hadn't done to him what he did to Murdock and Tina.

The door to the patient's room clicked shut behind her as she stepped out into the hallway. The next nurse that went to check on him would sound the alarm, so she needed to hurry. Thankfully, The Doctor's office was on this floor of the building.

She read every door plaque that she passed on her jog down the hall. They were all engraved with the names of different psychologists, but she recognized them. None of them were surgeons. The hallway stopped at a dead end, and Nancy walked to the last door. It had no bronze name plate like the others. No window, either.

The knob turned easily, which surprised her. She thought it would have been locked. A strip of light fell over the floor of the dim room as the door creaked open. She stepped inside and shut it behind her. The shapes that she took for furniture were sparse and plain. He didn't seem to care for decorations or framed photographs. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that nothing but the bare essentials for an office had been brought in, leaving a large amount of unused floor space. The only strange thing in the whole room was the television set in the back corner. The black screen reflected a warped image of Nancy as she walked by.

She went straight to the desk, pulling open the drawers and rummaging through the stacks of paper. But nothing she found looked nefarious. Some patient records, the most notable being Tina Grey's, Kevin Murdock's, and her own, were piled inside the middle drawer. She shoved them away and tugged on the bottom drawer.

It didn't budge. She pulled harder.

Crouching down on her knees, she noticed a tiny metal circle beside the handle. It was a lock. She smirked to herself as she slipped two bobby pins out from her hair and bit one into a slight curve at the tip, scraping off the rubber-nubbed end with her teeth. Looks like all the time she'd spent hanging out with Rod hadn't been for nothing.

After bending the other pin into an L shape, she inserted it into the lock and slipped the curved one in on top of it. The pin jiggled in deeper as it worked though the simple pin-and-tumbler mechanism. She shoved the bobby pin all the way in and turned the bent one sideways, hearing a small click. When she tugged on the drawer this time, it rolled open as easily as a paper scroll.

A file with a string of numbers written across the bottom lay on top of the pile. Nancy lifted it out and opened it. It was a patient record like the others, except that half the information had been blacked out with a marker. Every sheet of paper had missing information, making them almost unreadable. Some still had the patient's names (which were all unfamiliar to Nancy) and dates of admission to Westin Hills, and she saw a few that dated back to the nineteen-seventies. All of the files had one thing in common: The line for the patient's discharge date was blank. None of these people ever left the hospital.

Digging to the bottom of the drawer, she pulled out three more files of blacked-out information and leafed through the pages. Clipped to the back of the last folder was a thin stack of Polaroid photos. She took them out and shuffled through them, cringing at the images. The first was a close-up shot of an exposed nasal cavity, with the soft, bloody tissue spread apart by a small retractor. "Trial # 38" had been written on the wide white border beneath it. The next photograph showed a row of three young women buckled flat onto steel tables. Their skulls had been sawed open and popped off like a lid, revealing the folds of their slimy pink brains. Each woman had a smooth wooden stick between her teeth that had been fastened with straps around the back of her head. Below the picture were the handwritten words "Trials # 84, 85, and 86." As she flipped through the rest, a surge of hot bile threatened the back of her throat. Most of the mutilated people in these photographs were dead. But not all of them.

She clipped the Polaroids back onto the file and set the stack aside, peering down into the drawer. It was empty except for a single VHS tape. After lifting it out, she flipped it over and found a long white label on the side that read "Trial # 172" in block letters.

She flicked her eyes toward the door as it opened. Shoving the files back into the drawer, she pushed it shut and crawled under the desk. She drew in her legs and held the tape close to her chest as heavy footstep shook the floor. They were so evenly spaced and robotic that Nancy almost forgot to wonder why the person hadn't switched on the light.

The footsteps crossed the room, and the man's legs came into view as he stood before the desk. Nancy had never been this close to The Doctor. She tried to sink farther back, eyeing the oxfords and slacks and praying that he wouldn't sit down on the leather rolling chair. But he didn't sit. He remained standing in that spot in the dark for what felt like an hour. She was sure that her thumping heartbeat had given her away, and any second he would lunge under the desk after her.

A few more minutes passed, and he walked out of his office. Nancy waited until she was sure he was gone before crawling back out to stand up and stretch her legs. Crossing to the corner of the room, she knelt in front of the television and pushed the on button for the VCR. A little red light came on in the top corner. She lined the tape up with the slot, pushing it through and listening as it settled into place inside.

She hit the play button and slid back as the screen bathed her in a white glow. Waves of gray static crackled behind the bowed glass. The video timer clocked the first seconds as she sat on the floor, unprepared for what she was about to see.

.

.

.

 _To be continued…_

* * *

 **A/N: No, I'm not above leaving you guys with a cliff-hanger. Have you not realized by now that I like to make you squirm? (At least, I hope you're squirming. And if not, you will be after you read the next chapter.)**  
 **Thank you for reading, and please leave a review if you can spare a minute. To be honest, I need all the motivation I can get right now.**


	5. Collapse

**A/N: Hallelujah! I thought I'd never get this chapter finished and posted. *Wipes sweaty brow*  
**

 **Now for our thank-you segment: Thank you to Darkness Takes Over for reviewing chapter 4, and to "Freddy K Fan" for reviewing chapters 3 AND 4. (Here you may imagine some clever remark that I had no time to write because I'm trying to update this story as fast as I can before life kicks me in the nuts with another load of distractions and obligations.)**

 **(P.S. I don't have nuts. I'm a girl.)**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own A Nightmare on Elm Street or any of its characters.**

 **WARNING: CERTAIN CHAPTERS OF THE FOLLOWING STORY WILL CONTAIN GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, AND ADULT LANGUAGE. TO AVOID SPOILERS, THERE WILL NOT BE INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS FOR EACH CHAPTER.**

* * *

 **Chapter Five: Collapse**

Sterile white walls appeared on the screen. Against the back wall stood two narrow hospital cots side by side. A young unconscious boy lay on the left bed with only a blue paper gown tied to his skinny body. Another young boy sat on the cot to the right with no shirt, staring straight ahead. From the distance between him and the camera, and the grainy quality of the footage, Nancy could make out little more than a black smudge where his eyes were. His shoulders were hunched, and the edges of his lower ribs stuck out from his sides. Red, blue and green wires had been hooked up to both their heads, trailing out over the white sheets like tendrils and connecting with the boxy monitors beside each bed. Three levels of spiking lines zigzagged across the screens.

Someone adjusted the camera, giving it a slight tilt that revealed streaks of white glare on the plate of glass between them and the boys. They were filming into a separate room through a wide observation window. A man in a white lab coat passed in front of the camera so close that Nancy could only see part of his chest before he disappeared on the other side.

"August third, nineteen seventy-nine," said a deep voice dulled with exhaustion. The audio was fuzzy as he continued speaking after a brief pause. "Eight forty-seven PM. Results of Trial number one seventy-two."

The shuffling of papers could be heard off screen. What sounded like a pencil or pen rolled off something and clattered to the floor. Lines shot through the film as it crackled for a few seconds, and Nancy reached forward to lower the volume on the television.

"Subject one, the control subject, has achieved REM sleep naturally. EEG monitoring shows typical brain activity," the man said. "Subject two has not only survived the initial testing and procedure, but appears to be responding well to the temporal lobe alterations."

"I don't believe it…one seventy-two is a success," said a second, younger male voice. The words were spoken with the last of his breath.

"Subject two has undergone extensive modifications to his brain's limbic system, particularly to the hippocampus and amygdala," continued the older man. "The neurotransmitter-producing nuclei in the Pons region of the brain stem have been permanently shut down to fix the subject in a perpetual REM state."

The boy sitting on the cot hadn't moved a muscle since the tape started. He might have been a mannequin posed there with his arms hanging limply at his sides. Nancy had seen this before in the cafeteria with Kevin Murdock and in the girl's shower room with Tina. It was as if all three of their minds had been tuned to an off-air radio station.

"He is physiologically asleep while appearing to retain most of his conscious faculties, with the exception of higher-level functions such as creative problem solving and critical thinking."

He stopped speaking, leaving only the sound of pen scratching paper on a hard surface. Then he could barely be heard mumbling, "is it out of ink?" After a few seconds of rummaging: "Here, take this one."

"Thank you, sir."

More scribbling, rushed and frantic to make up for lost time.

"Jesus, we're supposed to _read_ that later. Write neatly."

"Sorry."

The older man cleared his throat and spoke articulately for the camera's microphone. "Testing of the subject's reaction to epinephrine injections will begin after-"

He stopped short. Nancy knew they were both staring at the boy's bare chest.

So was she.

Thick red lines started to appear on the skin. They moved fluidly as if they were being drawn by an invisible finger dipped in paint. But as the camera refocused, she saw that they weren't lines at all. They were cuts. Curved lacerations split through his flesh along with straight slices and one little stab hole. The boy didn't flinch the entire time. When it was over, the words "Good job, doc" were carved into him.

A palpable discomfort fell over the men, leaving only the hum of the VCR to fill the span of silence. Thin rivulets of blood trickled from the letters and soaked red spots into the waistband of the boy's pants. The speakers built into the television set spewed out fuzzy popping sounds. Both men were still speechless after the noises cleared away. When the older man finally spoke, it was with a practiced apathy. "Stay here and continue monitoring the subjects."

The torso in the white lab coat walked by the camera again, and somewhere in the room a door opened and shut. Everything was quiet for a few minutes. Then Nancy heard deep breathing. It grew louder and more irregular before turning into desperate gasps. His throat constricted, making the air difficult to swallow. When the young man tried to exhale, it came out in shudders that ended with the first crack of a sob. Hoarse whimpers split his voice. He sniffled through his swollen nose and let out a low, despondent moan.

From the other side of the window, the boy lifted his head to look past the camera at what Nancy assumed was the young assistant. The crying stopped. After dropping his feet to the floor, the boy walked slowly towards the camera. He stood inches from the window, staring just to the left of the lens. He watched the assistant as hitched breathing filled the speakers.

"I'm sorry," the young man choked out. "It had to be somebody."

The test subject didn't move, continuing to watch whoever was behind the camera. His lips twitched and then, as if a miniature car jack had been placed between his teeth, his mouth stretched open wide. If the observation room hadn't been sound proof, Nancy was sure she would have heard the fracture cracking at the hinges of his jaw. The thick muscle of his tongue shot straight out, pulled taunt. An invisible force stretched it farther and farther until it tore loose and fell out of sight below the window. A stream of black blood flowed out of his empty, cavernous mouth.

The assistant broke down, forcing out long hard sobs through his clenched teeth. They were the cries of someone who didn't want to see but couldn't look away. Nancy heard fear and guilt and disgust churning in the back of his throat.

The boy stooped down out of view, and when he stood back up he had the tongue in his hand. He dragged it across the glass, spelling out "hold your tongue or I will, bitch" backwards in translucent red streaks. Then he put his forehead against the window and flashed a black grin. Blood caked his teeth and continued to flow over his bottom lip and down his chin like a fountain gargoyle.

The assistant tried to hush himself, but a few small whimpers escaped him as the tongue was brought up to the window again. Below the first message, the boy wrote "watch this." He turned away and started walking with perversely cartoonish steps, raising the arch of each foot to tiptoe toward the cots. He paused mid-stride and glanced back over his shoulder with that same dripping grin that made Nancy want to puke. Ragged breaths tore from the assistant's throat as he remained out of frame. The boy came to a stop by the unconscious subject who lay unaware of the bloody teeth smiling down at him.

After aiming one last glance at the assistant to be sure he was watching, the boy climbed onto the cot. He propped himself up on all fours on top of subject one. The boy's body blocked the view of the camera, but it appeared that he was gathering the colorful wires and twisting them together into a thick cord. He wrapped each end around his fists and slipped the makeshift rope under the subject's head, crossing the ends at the front of his throat. Within seconds the sleeping boy woke up, eyes popping open like corks with too much foamy pressure built up behind them. His arms battered against the boy in an attempt to shove him away, but although he appeared to be in much better shape, he couldn't defend himself. The other boy seemed to posses a strength that shouldn't have belonged to such scrawny arms and sharp, poking shoulder blades.

Not a sound could be heard through the glass. The film skipped and crackled like a silent movie. A thick, gooey strand of blood dripped from the boy's mouth, splattering subject one in the face. The battering fists loosened. His arms struck with less force and speed. They sunk back down to the thin mattress like withering vines and fell out over the edges of the cot. The dead weight of his hands pulled down on his limp wrists. The tension in his neck smoothed away, leaving a flaccid arch of bruising skin as his head lulled back.

The boy climbed off the cot and faced the assistant. There was nothing comical in his steps as he came back towards the window. He curled his hand into a fist, knocking on the thick glass as gently as a fingertip taps a fish tank. It almost sounded polite. He slipped out of frame and a few seconds later, Nancy heard the rattling of a door handle.

"Leave me alone," the assistant stammered between erratic gulps of air. " _Leave me alone_."

The sobs returned. Rummaging could be heard again, but this time it was desperate and messy. Pencils and pens shot out past the camera, hitting the floor like a hail of bullets as the assistant continued to dig for whatever he was looking for. Then Nancy heard the hard click of a cocking gun.

"Please just go away."

The door shook violently against its hinge-pins. Relentless doorknob twists and terrified whimpers filled the speakers. The wooden doorframe cracked under the pressure, and the door slammed open against the wall.

The assistant didn't make another sound. As the boy crossed in front of the camera lens, the words carved in his skin came into focus. Sloppy shreds of muscle frayed the edges of a few letters. The flesh had split wide enough in some places for his ribs to peek through. Slow trickles of blood still flowed from the gaping wounds until they coagulated, clinging to the boy like black gelatin. A chair scraped over the floor, and stumbling footsteps backed into the other side of the room.

"Stay away from me," the assistant warned. If his hands were shaking as much as his voice was, the barrel of the gun must have been aiming all over the place. "I swear I'll shoot. Don't take another step."

But the boy's footsteps continued without a single pause. Nancy stared at the still frame of the empty observation room and tried to decipher each tiny noise. The gun fired, embedding a stray bullet in the wall. The second one hit the ceiling. Dust and chipped paint rained down in a light sprinkle.

There was no third shot.

"Get off me," the man shouted. Something hard and metal clattered onto the floor. The speakers popped from the blast of his screams. She heard the struggle and the skid of the table legs as their bodies fell against it. The screen shook as the camera rocked on whatever propped it up. The assistant came into frame for less than a second, trying to run to the door. Nancy didn't see his face long enough to register any features, only the contortion of fear and panic in his forehead and around his eyes. Then an emaciated arm snatched the front of his throat and pulled him back out of view.

"Help! Somebody hel-" he hollered, his voice cutting off halfway through. Nancy tried not to picture the spidery white fingers curling around his throat and digging into the flesh like dough. The dead silence that follow sounded worse than anything she'd heard since the tape started. It dragged on, as if the moment were frozen and the man was trapped within it.

The black barrel of a gun emerged onto the frame from the opposite side of the room, followed by the hand holding it and then the white lab coat. Nancy exhaled, hoping that the assistant hadn't suffocated yet. The shot fired and for a moment, the audio went out. When it came back on, she heard the slow shuffle of footsteps. But it wasn't the assistant that the doctor was helping across the room. The gaunt boy walked by the camera as docile as a lamb with the Doctor's arm around him for support.

"Control yourself, Krueger. It wasn't easy to find an intern like that, and it won't be easy to replace him."

The camera remained fixed on the observation window as they passed. The dead teenager was still lying on his cot on the other side. She imagined the assistant with the same limpness in his body, slumped against the wall with a dripping red halo of splattered blood behind his head. Part of her rejected the image; she couldn't be sure he was dead because she didn't see it happen. But the film continued for another twenty minutes before the doctor came back to shut it off, and the assistant never left that room.

Nancy hit the eject button, waiting for the tape to dislodge itself from the guts of the VCR. It slid out and she grabbed it. This was exactly what she needed. As she stared down at the two rolls of film behind the clear plastic, she had to admit that what was on this tape was hard to believe. The Doctor and at least some of the hospital staff were working with Freddy.

Hand-picking children for him and placing them right into his claws.

Yanking the patient files out of the bottom drawer of the desk and gripping the tape in hand, she rushed out of the office. The hallway was still empty, and she ran without thinking about how loudly the soles of her bare feet slapped the floor. She had to get out of here.

She ran around a corner and almost tripped over her own feet as a huge orderly stepped out from a dark doorway. He looked at her and then looked straight ahead with his chest puffed out like a guard at Buckingham Palace. She thought about running back the way she'd come, but that would lead her to a dead end. Without losing too much speed or thinking too hard, she bolted past him. He didn't even blink.

She glanced down at her knuckles to be sure she wasn't asleep. The numbers were still there. Before she had time to worry about why he was acting strange, a second man emerged from an office she was rushing past. He didn't seem to care about her at all. He straightened his back and stood flat against the door.

As Nancy looked over her shoulder while passing him, she caught sight of the sky outside the window. It wasn't starry and black like it had been a little while ago. The color had lightened to a dark purple with hazy lilac clouds swirling through it. A sprinkle of glowing shapes drifted along like mutating jellyfish between the interlocking currents of air, passing from one stream into the next.

Again, she checked her hands for the numbers that anchored her to reality. Again, they were still there.

When she looked back up, doors on both sides of the hallway were opening, and staff members were coming out from each of them. But not a single one gave Nancy more than a fleeting glance. They lined the long hallway like courtyard statues.

From around the bend stepped a narrow-shouldered teenage boy in white pajamas. She recognized the crown of his fluffy brunette hair and his slender arms, although his face was tipped down.

"Glen," she called. "Glen, run!"

He didn't respond. He didn't move. She ran up to him and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his slight chest. The urge to cry was overwhelming, but she pushed it back down her throat. Now wasn't the time. They needed to escape before the staff snapped out of whatever trance they were in.

"Come on, Glen; we don't have a lot of time," she said, lifting her face to look at him. He lifted his head, too. But what caught her eye were his hands as he raised them from his sides. Both palms were sliced open, letting out thin streams of blood that intersected like a spider web over his fingers and pooled to droplets under his nails. He cupped her cheeks and smeared them with the hot, slimy liquid.

"What happened to you?" she asked, staring into his blue eyes. It was at that moment that she realized his eyes were supposed to be brown.

The hands clamped harder onto her cheeks, but she ripped herself away from him. As she scanned all around her, she noticed something that hadn't registered with her before. Every single member of the staff was staring at her. And all their eyes were like blue fire. The sickening feeling came over her that she was being watched by the same person from a dozen different angles, and she shuffled backwards and forwards, unsure of where to run.

From out of nowhere, she felt the sensation of hundreds of little ants crawling all over her hands. She spread her fingers out in front of her, seeing the numbers moving over her skin. New letters split from the black lines like rapidly dividing cells and shifted up toward her wrists. The numbers stayed in pairs of two as the letters spelled out an eerily familiar rhyme.

 _1, 2, Freddy's coming for you_

 _3, 4, better lock your door…_

The rhyme scrawled itself into her hands like a demonic tattoo. This wasn't possible. She was awake.

The faces of every nurse and orderly, and even Glen's face, began to change. Cheek bones dislodges themselves and moved to different positions. Noses morphed and elongated into sloping curves. Every scalp shed its hair, sending down a shower of locks in all lengths and shades that disintegrated to grey ash on the floor. With their bodies remaining intact, each person's face morphed into the burnt, hook-nosed dream demon. Nearly twenty Freddy Kruegers cracked their rotten grins at her, and she whipped around to find the same head sitting on Glen's shoulders.

The foundations of the building rumbled like an earthquake were splitting it down the middle. Cracks ran up the white walls like bolts of lightning, tearing through the chipping paint. Drywall rained down from the ceiling as the walls crumbled and collapsed. Nancy looked all around for a safe place to run to, but the entire building came down before she had a chance to move. She crouched and wrapped her arms over the top of her head, choking on plaster dust.

It took less than a minute for the air to clear.

Heaps of debris were left where the walls had stood, and beyond them stretched an endless wasteland. There had been nothing outside that hallway. Nothing but the dry, barren earth and the arch of the swirling purple sky above. When she brought her eyes back down from the expanse, there was only one Freddy standing a few yards away.

"But I'm awake," she cried, taking a hesitant step back as he closed in on her. His shoulders dipped like a cougar as he walked, giving the impression that he might pounce at any moment. Unlike the replicas, he had his hat tipped over his brow, and he pushed it up at the rim so she could see the sick delight in his eyes.

"You're not awake, bitch. You're not asleep either," he purred. "You're dead."

"Fuck you," she screamed.

He stretched the burn scars on his face with a wide grin, eyeing her body from head to toe. "We'll get to that part, don't worry."

As he took in the curve of her waist and her bottom lip that trembled no matter how hard she tried to stop it, he wondered how many more times he was going to do this. It hadn't been as satisfying as he thought it'd be. Not as satisfying as the _first time_. Erasing her memories and hunting her down again was like watching a movie he'd already seen.

But some movies are worth a second watch.

.

.

.

 _To be continued…_

* * *

 **A/N: TA-DAAAAA! I hope that answered some of your questions (and left you with some new ones). I'll have the next chapter posted within 2 weeks. In the mean time, please leave a review. Scientists have discovered that a single review can add up to three years onto the lifespan of a fanficiton writer. It's true. I swear.  
**

 **Stop looking at me like that.**

 _ **Stop it.**_


	6. Common Trauma

**A/N:** **I have some wonderful news that none of you probably care about, but I'm going to force it down your throats anyway:**

 **I gutted a piggy!**

 **Alright, settle down, it isn't as bad as you think. It was dissection day in my biology class. I got to cut it open, and I was channeling Freddy the whole time. Our professor told us we could slice open the skull and examine the brain if we wanted to, but it wasn't a requirement. So I did it (in the name of science, of course). Me and one of the guys in my group decided to remove it, and we ended up mutilating the entire head pretty badly before we finally got the brain out.**

 **The guy asked this squeamish girl who had been standing a few feet from us if she wanted a turn with the scalpel, and she said "No way! It has a face!"**

 **And I, being the sensitive soul that I am, couldn't help but reply, "not anymore."**

 **It was a good day.**

 **But before we go any further, let me send a huge thank you to Darkness Takes Over and thatredheadedchick for reviewing chapter 5. That pig mutilation was for you guys. *Clasps hand over heart*  
**

 **Anyways, on to the story!** **  
**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own A Nightmare on Elm Street or any of its characters.**

 **WARNING: CERTAIN CHAPTERS OF THE FOLLOWING STORY WILL CONTAIN GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, AND ADULT LANGUAGE. TO AVOID SPOILERS, THERE WILL NOT BE INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS FOR EACH CHAPTER.**

* * *

 **Chapter Six: Common Trauma**

The rock wall was rutted and hard against her back, but Nancy was tired of standing. Tired of pacing. She sunk down and drew in her knees, cradling herself as she looked around the tiny cave that Krueger had locked her in. Stalactites hung from the low ceiling like jagged stone icicles, and the open end of the alcove was barred off like a tiny jail cell. On the other side of a narrow walkway she saw rows of identical cells with hushed darkness hanging thick behind the bars. If anyone else were trapped in here with her, they weren't making a sound. But she didn't mind the silence. It helped her think.

Nothing is more difficult for a conscious mind to accept than the fact that it is dead. The act of thinking is the evidence that the mind clings to as it screams in protest, and it is left with two choices: continue to reject its death, or accept that death is not what it imagined. That it's not the end.

She didn't want to believe what that bastard told her, but his words were like the first cracks in the dam that had kept reality at bay, branching out in all directions until it breaks down the concrete wall and releases the flood. The memories were coming back, and there was no way to deny it. She saw it all in flashes: the first night Freddy crawled into her dreams. That perverted nursery rhyme playing over and over in her head. And the running. She had run from him for so long, wasting away on caffeine and adderall. She had tried to tell someone, but no one believed her. Not Tina. Not Glen. Not even her own father, who had stood and said nothing while the paramedics strapped her - screaming, struggling, flailing - onto a gurney and loaded her into the ambulance. He had promised her that she'd only be staying at Westin hills for a little while, and he had been right. Because Freddy had sliced open her throat as soon as they'd sedated her on the second day.

She curled up tighter on the rocky floor, touching her neck and knowing that the cut was not there anymore. This wasn't her body; her body was probably rotting under a headstone in the Springwood Cemetery. This was only her soul.

Leaning her head back on the cave wall, she took a deep breath. Her mind was spinning. How long has she been here? Weeks? Months? _Years?_ She prayed that Freddy hadn't gotten to Glen or Tina. It had crossed her mind that they might be in the cells across from her, but she was too scared to call out.

She shook off those thoughts and set her mind to separating reality from lies. As real as it had felt, she knew everything she'd seen and heard during her most recent stint in Westin Hills had been a fabrication. Freddy had stitched it together from pieces of her brief experience with the hospital, and no doubt mixed in a heaping helping of his own bullshit to screw with her head.

She shuddered, remembering how she'd kissed Glen and hugged Tina in the shower. But that wasn't Glen she kissed and it wasn't Tina she'd pressed her naked body against.

It was Freddy the whole time.

He was every nurse, every orderly. He was Rod and Glen and Tina and Kevin Murdock. He was Max. He was the Doctor. None of it was real.

…Right?

The sides of her head throbbed, unable to process the thoughts pulsing through it. The more she tried to think, the blurrier everything became. All she could do was clutch her forehead and hope that her friends were okay.

Footsteps jolted her from her thoughts. Half of her wanted to sink back into the shadows of the tiny jail cell and hide, but her curiosity urged her forward. She crawled up to the bars and looked out in the direction of the weak light at the entrance.

The tapping of shoes on the dirty stone ground echoed throughout the cavern, reverberating off the jagged walls. Her fingers trembled as she wrapped them around the bars and pressed her face into the gap between them, trying to see around the curve in the walkway. The top of a shadow stretched across the ground. It got closer with every step. Every fiber in her muscles was screaming at her to cower back, but she made herself stay. She wouldn't give that motherfucker the satisfaction of seeing her scared.

The head, neck and shoulders of the long shadow fell across the dirt. When the person stepped around the bend, she didn't trust her own eyes. It wasn't Freddy.

It was a little girl.

She stood like a doll in a white lace dress and a pair of black Mary Janes. The skirt puffed around her legs, falling in airy, gauzy layers. The girl twisted her finger into one of her brown plaited pigtails and looked at Nancy with eyes that seemed too old to belong to a child.

"Welcome back," the little girl said. "I missed you."

Nancy's brow furrowed in confusion. "What are you talking about? Who are you?"

"It's okay. I knew he would make you forget about me," she said. Her words came out with a hint of sadness.

As she studied her, Nancy thought that she did seem familiar. Then all at once, she saw in her mind the white skirt bouncing around the child's legs as she leapt over the curve of the jump rope. She heard the other children chant that nursery rhyme as the little girl's braids floated around her head at the height of the jump. The sidewalk they played on was covered in chalk drawings and hopscotch boards. The scene slowed down and the color drained from everything, leaving the child suspended in the air and the rope frozen in mid-swing.

She had seen the girl before. In her nightmares.

"Wait," Nancy said. "I think I do remember you."

"But you don't remember the first time he locked you up in here," the girl said, running her little hand over the rusty bars. The metal whispered under her fingertips.

"I've been here before?" Nancy asked. "When?"

"When he killed you. Before he put your soul in that place."

"You mean his fucked up version of Westin Hills."

"Yeah," said the little girl. "And he's going to put you back in there again, and then you'll forget all about me a second time."

"What?" Nancy said, bolting up onto her feet. She clutched the bars and they rattled from the weight thrown against them. The small child had to crane her neck back to look up at Nancy.

"He told me that's what he's using you for. He likes to chase you and catch you; he's going to do it again, and again, and again."

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Nancy shouted. Her feet left tracks in the dirt as she paced back and forth in front of the bars like a caged tiger. Her skin flushed red, and the rage simmering behind her blue eyes was almost enough to hide the fear.

"You don't," the little girl replied flatly. "You can't stop him. Not unless…"

"Unless what?"

The girl shook her head and looked down at her shiny shoes, scuffing them against the dirt. "Forget I said anything. It would only make things worse for you."

"I can't imagine anything being much worse than this," Nancy said. She stared at the child with an earnest anger.

"You don't have much of an imagination, then."

"Please," Nancy begged, "please just tell me. What's the worst that could happen? I'm already dead."

The girl heaved a sigh. "Alright. But if it ends the way I think it will, it'll be your own fault. Don't blame me."

"I won't," Nancy said, touching the girl's fingers through the bars. The child pulled her hand away and looked off to the side.

"There's a way to get out of here, but it's not easy."

Nancy's gaze narrowed and locked on the child. "What do you mean 'out of here'?"

"Out of the Dreamscape. To the place you were supposed to go."

"Heaven?"

"Maybe. I don't know," said the girl.

"How do we escape?" asked Nancy.

"You can't escape," replied the child, rolling her eyes.

"But you just said-"

"I said you can get out. That's not the same thing as escaping."

Nancy shook her head, making the waves of her tangled brown hair lash at her cheeks. "You're not making any sense."

"If you want to leave the Dreamscape, Freddy has to _let you_ out."

"And how the hell am I going to make him do that?" Nancy shouted, frustration thinning her voice.

"That's why I told you it's not easy," the child said. "But it's not impossible, either. There's something he wants that he can't do on his own."

"What do I have to do?"

"You have to find him and give him a reason not to drag you right back here," said the girl. "Come closer."

Nancy tilted her head to the side and crouched, pressing it against the bars. The little girl cupped her hands around her mouth and whispered something into her ear. Nancy's expression flashed from shock to confusion.

"That sounds insane," Nancy said.

"I know it does, but there's no other way."

"What if he doesn't agree?"

Whatever small amount of light left in the little girl's eyes vanished. They became dark and hollow, revealing thoughts that no child should ever have to think. "Then he'll put you inside his chest with the others. You don't want to go in there."

Nancy wanted to ask the girl what she was talking about, but she bit her tongue. Something in the child's face told her that she had spoken from experience. A horrifying experience.

The girl noticed the confusion that Nancy was trying to hide. "Do you want to know what's inside his chest?" she asked in the same flat voice from before.

All Nancy could do was give a single nod.

"Hell," said the child. And neither spoke another word about it.

The girl went to the lock on the bars and slipped a silver key out from behind her ear. She stuck it into the keyhole, and it turned with a click. The wide door of bars creaked open under its own weight as the child stepped back.

"Come on," she said, motioning Nancy forward.

The child had started to walk back toward the entrance of the cave, leaving Nancy to follow at her leisure.

"Wait," Nancy called. "What's your name?"

The girl stopped and turned to her, and her voice sounded as distant as an old woman recalling her youth. "Anne Foster."

The name flipped a switch in Nancy's mind, flooding another section of her memories with light. She saw herself hunched over a microfilm reader in the library. The blacked out old newspapers on record that she had read when the nightmares started were scrolling by in front of her. The earliest censored article had a black and white photograph of a little girl with dark plaited pigtails. The bold black headline shouted "ELM STREET CHILD MISSING." A caption with her name and age was printed below the photo: Anne Foster, six years old. The first victim of the Springwood Slasher.

Nancy caught up to her as she was stepping out through the mouth of the cave. "How will I find him?"

Anne kicked a rock and it skipped across the dusty ground. Her back was to Nancy. "He likes to be alone after a kill so he can sharpen his claws. He might make it impossible to reach him," she said.

"Where is he?" Nancy insisted.

The child shook her head. "It doesn't work like that here. The ground stretches and shrinks with a twitch of his finger. We're standing in the palm of his hand, so just start walking. And be careful."

A dozen questions popped into Nancy's head, but before she could ask any of them, Anne started backing towards her. She looked all around, pigtails whipping against her neck and eyes wide and watery as if she alone could hear a howling wolf near by. She ran back into the cave without saying goodbye, her white dress being swallowed last by the shadows.

When the girl was gone, Nancy turned back to find that something had appeared in the great, vast nothing in front of her. A long burrow cut through the earth at an angle, leading down to thick blackness. The opening was wide enough for her to fit through, and, with no other place to go, she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled into it. She felt like she were sliding down a dry trachea, rubbing dirt loose from above as her back grazed the tunnel. The dirt became moister the farther she went, and soon the cool, damp smell of earth filled her nostrils. The light had been snuffed out several yards back, but she could feel the pressure of caked up dirt under her fingernails and the wet sandy texture on her palms.

The burrow emptied out into a small dug-out. Nancy clawed through to the opening, tumbling onto the ground. The floor of the underground room was the same kind of dirt, but with something dry and scratchy scattered over it. Scraping up a handful of the stuff, she examined it in the dim light. Long, stiff pieces of straw stuck out from her balled fist. She let them flutter back down and stood to her feet, noticing the objects around her for the fist time. They were furniture.

Her old bedroom furniture.

The set-up was the same as it had been when she was a child. Her tall white dresser stood against the back wall of dirt with a familiar lilac design stenciled on the center of each drawer. The blue quilt was spread across her bed and folded over at the top, letting her fluffy pillow peak out invitingly. On the left of the bed was the little nightstand, as squat as a tree stump, with a pink piggybank on top beside the lamp.

She didn't notice the closet door embedded in the wall until it creaked open.

Her hands fisted into the blanket as she pulled it close to her mouth, registering vaguely at that moment that she was now tucked in bed. The door continued to swing out on its squeaking hinge, and the sliver of black widened fully as it came to a stop. The burrow was silent. The open doorway stared back at Nancy.

"Mommy," she called. "Daddy."

No use. They couldn't hear her over the noise they were making. She heard them downstairs, locked in one of their shouting matches. Harsh, angry voices echoed up the stairwell (Had they been yelling the whole time?). Their words were almost clear enough to distinguish if she strained to hear.

But she didn't strain to hear. Because something much worse was going on right in front of her.

It was only a shift within the shadows at first, but soon she could see it emerging from the back of the shrouded closet. Its outline took shape, filling the doorway. Meaty arms. Stiff, gnarled ears. The Rabbit lifted its massive paw and waved, which would have seemed friendly if she didn't already know what it planned to do to her.

The straw crinkled under its long, heavy feet as it thumped towards her. Panic clogged her veins, making her heart work harder and harder to pump her icy blood. The back of her throat clenched dry around what was supposed to be a swallow as she stared at it. Two uneven, saliva-slicked teeth protruded from under its muzzle. The nightmarish shambling movements of its bowed legs made it almost look like a cripple in a mascot costume. But it wasn't a costume. She could see the nose twitching.

She scrambled up to the headboard, clutching the blanket like a shield as she remembered the first time she'd dreamt of it. Although it came silently towards her now, she could still hear the words it had spoken to her all those years ago. Its voice was male, but pitched higher than any man she'd ever heard, and sickly-sweet. It had stood at the foot of the bed and asked her what her favorite food was. She had said chocolate-chip cookies. Then it had asked her if she knew what _its_ favorite food was. She didn't know. It had parted its muzzle slightly, which she took for a smile.

" _Little girls' feet."_

The straw rustled over the ground, bunching up in front of its toes as it left bare streaks in the dirt behind it. Nancy's bones felt like led; she couldn't move. It was close enough that she could see its ratty fur and the patches of hairless, leathery skin that wrinkled as it moved.

"Go away," she cried. "You're just a bad dream. I'm not scared of you."

But her face disagreed with her words. It was pale and sweaty, and her eyes were frozen open. Black, dilating pupils filled her blue irises, adjusting to the dark and not liking what they saw. Its stiff nails coming to rest on her leg jolted the life back into her limbs. She barrel-rolled to the other side of the bed and fell to the floor. Kicking up straw, she bolted out of the bedroom. If it had chased her, she didn't know, because she didn't look back until she was out in the hallway on the safe side of a closed door. She kept a tight grip on the knob and, looking down, saw the shadows of its feet in the gap along the bottom. It was on the other side. Waiting for her to come back

The shouting had gotten louder and more distinct, filling the dark hall. She followed the sound to the top of the staircase and placed a hand on the railing. The lights were on downstairs. Their yellow glow almost reached her face, lighting her toes as they curled around the edge of the landing. She dropped her foot to the first step. As she went down, the yelling became clearer.

"Don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about, Marge," came her father's voice. "You spent two hundred dollars on a fucking _purse_. You think we have that kind of money?"

"There's nothing wrong with buying something nice every once in a while. If you got your head out of your ass and stopped spending every fucking spare minute of your _life_ at the station, you might learn how to enjoy yourself," her mother screamed back.

A cabinet slammed shut.

"Oh, great," said Don, his voice nasty and ironic, "Good thinking: have _another_ drink. Because seven shots of vodka isn't enough for one day."

"Shut the fuck up, Donald. I wouldn't need to drink so much if I could tolerate being sober around you."

Nancy heard the sound of clinking and walked through the kitchen archway as her mother was filling a square glass. The long neck of the bottle rested on the rim of the cup, spilling out ice-clear liquid. Marge was gripping the bottle like she was trying to strangle it with a single hand. When her cup was brimming, she slammed the bottle onto the counter and left it there.

"Mom," Nancy said. But her words went unnoticed as her mother knotted her bathrobe and took a sip.

Donald clenched his stubbly jaw. He was seething beside the sink, and before Nancy could gasp, he lifted a dirty plate from the top of a pile of unwashed dishes and threw it into the wall. It shattered into thick ceramic slices, scratching up the tiles where they fell.

"Now who's wasting money?" Marge sneered. "You're gonna have to buy a replacement for that."

"Fuck you. It's my house, and I'll break _every goddamn thing in it_ if I want to," he roared, knocking over the empty vase on the table for good measure. The crash made Nancy flinch.

"Daddy, stop it," she said. But again, it was as if she were watching a movie with her hands on the screen, unable to reach the characters inside. She may as well have been invisible.

Yanking down the zipper, Donald pulled off his windbreaker and tossed it to the floor. His dark collared shirt had come untucked at the waist. Half of it hung out like a lolling tongue over his black leather belt.

"Why don't you clean up after yourself, you fucking slob?" said Marge. With one arm propping her up, she leaned over the table and sipped her vodka. Her messy blonde hair hung over her cheeks and her lips were drawn tight into a thin, spiteful line.

"Why don't you? What the hell do you do all day?"

"I keep-"

" _Besides_ getting drunk," he interrupted.

She spun around and glared at him. "You shut your fucking mouth."

But he didn't. He went on, mocking her with a look of sudden enlightenment. " _Oh_ , wait. I know what you do while I'm out _working_ to give you and Nancy food to eat: fucking the neighbors. That explains why you waste so much goddamn money on designer handbags and lipstick. You need to look good for your boyfriends."

"That is bullshit and you know it," Marge yelled.

"Is it?" asked Don, spreading his arms wide. "It makes sense to me. That must be why we don't fuck anymore."

"It's not my fault you can't get it up," Marge muttered.

"What was that?" he hollered. " _What the fuck did you just say_?"

"You heard me, limp dick," she sneered again.

Storming up behind her, he caught her by the hair and slammed her face into the table. She slipped off and hit the floor when he released her. Nancy wanted to rush to her mother's side, but didn't move. Marge wasn't unconscious. She was reaching for something.

She seized a long plate shard from the mess on the floor and spun around, stabbing it into Donald's thigh. A smile, satisfied and breathless, spread across her smashed face. The gash on her bottom lip split open, sending a stream of fresh blood trickling down her chin.

"You bitch," he screamed. He clamped a hand on her throat and kneed her in the stomach twice.

"Stop it! What are you doing?" cried Nancy.

Marge reached up and sunk her manicured nails into Donald's cheeks. She had raked them down to his jaw line before he finally shoved her away. Her legs buckled as she stumbled backwards, catching herself. They both stood facing each other. Eyes locked. Chests heaving.

Fists clenched.

They clashed at the center of the room. Don wound back his arm and swung at her jaw, cracking several of her teeth. The force knocked her head off to the side, but she brought it back around and cracked her neck. She spat blood into his eyes, and as he wiped at it, she hobbled him with a kick to the knee. He collapsed.

The bloody ceramic shard lay on the tiles above his head. Marge crawled over him and picked it up, burying it in his guts. His scream blended with Nancy's as Marge tilted the shiv and peeled open his abdominal wall. Lumpy blue intestines, smeared in red, were bunched up inside him. She dug into it, curling her fingers around the slimy tubes, and pulled them out in a tangled knot. Don's teeth ground together. His back arched and his hands clawed at the floor, trembling.

When she leaned in to sneer at him, he boxed her in the nose. The impact sent her sprawling out onto the tiles. Rising on shaky legs with trails of knobby, kinked intestines hanging from his hollowed stomach, Don stalked toward his wife. Nancy was pressed against the wall, hyperventilating.

"Daddy," she whispered.

Don clutched her jaw and pried the shard out of her hand. He sliced down her cheek, curving the sharp edge back up towards her eye and jabbing it straight through her pupil. Marge fell backwards onto the table, and the red picnic cloth bunched under her writhing body. The broken piece of plate stuck out from her head like a giant thorn, splashed with fresh blood. She yanked it out and leapt off her back, throwing herself into her husband as Nancy slid down the wall and hugged her knees. She was sobbing, with streaks of clear snot and tears on her contorted face. Her parents tangled themselves together, clawing and struggling. Marge stabbed clean through Donald's arm. Don flipped her over and pounded her face flat until her nose was nothing but splattered bits of bloody cartilage. He gnashed his teeth on the side of her neck and bit out a chunk of flesh with part of an artery sticking out of his mouth. Black blood poured from the crater.

Marge clamped both of her hands around Don's stabbed arm and twisted it around, throwing her body weight to the floor. The bones shattered and splintered out through his elbow as the flesh tore loose. She released him and crawled away. His arm dangled low by his knees, held on by a few thick strings of muscle and skin. It swung around and bounced against his legs as he came towards his wife.

"Stop it," Nancy said, voice hitched and shaky.

After bending over to pick up the plate shard, Don caught Marge by the shoulder and rammed it into her chest. She pried it out of herself and slashed it across his throat. His head tipped back as the wide red smile on his neck opened up. At the widest point, Nancy saw glimpses of his hollow trachea inside. Marge continued to stick him with the shard, and he hooked two of his fingers into her swollen, punctured eye socket. They came at each other over and over, as relentless as zombies.

"Stop it, Nancy said again. Her voice grew louder, more frantic: "Stop it. _Stop it. Stop hurting each other!_ "

The plate shard hit the floor, and everyone in the room was silent and still. Her parents turned to stare at her.

"You know what, honey?" Marge said. "I think she's right."

Donald nodded his head. "Yeah, she is."

They started closing in around her, their skin in tatters.

"We shouldn't be hurting each other," continued Marge. "It's Nancy's fault we argue so much. We should be hurting her, instead."

They lunged at her, and grabbed her by the legs. She clawed at the floor in a desperate attempt to pull herself free. Her legs kicked back against her parents as they dragged her in. She flipped over and reached out her arms, clinging to the kitchen doorway. Her fingers struggled to keep their grip around the edge of the frame. Marge's nails sunk into her thighs, and she screamed through grinding teeth.

Clamping her hands tighter around the doorway, she yanked herself forward and managed to rip free. She scrambled to her feet and ran through the living room. Behind her was the sound of their feet padding across the floor and the soft thump of Donald's dangling hand hitting his knee with each step. She jumped over the back of the couch and slid down to the cushions, bouncing off them like a springboard.

The door knob was almost within reach. She ran to it and twisted it, throwing open the front door and slamming it shut behind her. But just like the Rabbit, her parents never tried to come out of the house. She released the knob and turned.

And pressed her back against the door.

Mere inches from her toes was a jagged cliff, and beyond it stretched an endless land of crooked rocks and barren earth. The skyline was like a row of sharp, fractured teeth, fading into that purple haze far in the distance. Not one living creature could be seen for miles around. Only dirt and dust.

With the red door behind her beginning to rattle and the wasteland in front of her being lashed with a dry wind, Nancy finally felt the thoughts connect in her mind. She was dead.

Dead and lost.

.

.

.

 _To be continued…_

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 **A/N: I have final exams starting this Monday, so I won't be able to begin writing chapter 7 until after they're done. On the plus side, once the semester is over I will have LOADS of free time to write, and that translates into faster updates (and, ideally, BETTER chapters) for you guys.**

 **Please review if you have a spare minute. It always makes my day brighter.**


	7. Balls

**A/N: Hey "Anon", thanks so much for reviewing! It's been my life's goal to cause fangirl (and fanboy) attacks in my readers. Glad to see I've finally succeeded; check that off the bucket list. :)  
**

 **Also, thank-you to Darkness Takes Over and thatredheadedchick for reviewing chapter 6. I bless your crops: may your harvests be plentiful. Unless you don't have harvests, in which case: may your purchases from the grocery store be discounted with many coupons!  
**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own A Nightmare on Elm Street or any of its characters.**

 **WARNING: CERTAIN CHAPTERS OF THE FOLLOWING STORY WILL CONTAIN GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, AND ADULT LANGUAGE. TO AVOID SPOILERS, THERE WILL NOT BE INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS FOR EACH CHAPTER.**

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 **Chapter Seven: Balls **

A shower of glowing orange sparks spurted out from the grating of stone on metal. They grayed like dying embers before a single one reached the cement floor. The stone slid up a long curved blade, turning within the firm grip of a charred hand. Freddy held the base of the middle blade next, and the worn leather glove attached to it hung limply in the boiling hot air. The other three finger-knives fell away and dangled. If his sweat glands hadn't melted off years ago, droplets would be collecting on his forehead as he leaned into his work. The sound of grinding picked up its pace, becoming faster, more violent. Steel and stone clashed in an angry rhythm like animals copulating.

Working out his frustrations on the next blade, he unhinged his thoughts and allowed them to settle on her again. His greatest trophy. His greatest loss. A loss, because he had taken her and ripped her apart too quickly, and now all he could do was act out the moment of her death over and over like a masturbatory fantasy. The real thing was buried and rotting. Every drop of blood that he could draw from her would be a cheap simulation. A peek into a dirty magazine. And that never satisfied him quite like the thrust of flesh into flesh.

He hadn't planned on this insatiable aching in his groin and in his chest. He had thought he could keep her caged like a pet and stab, slice, fuck the girl whenever the mood took him. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Knowing he could never have her body again made him want her more than he ever had. This craving would eat him alive. He could sense his desire corroding into something charcoal-black, and the festering sack of maggots hanging dead beneath his breastbone almost beat again. But not with any human emotion. For Freddy, untapped lust could only take one form: seething and demonic hatred.

Then an expected interruption.

He halted his work and turned enough to see over his hunched shoulder. Hesitant footsteps came up behind him, stopping a safe distance from the workbench. A pair of doll-sized Mary Jane shoes scuttled backwards as Freddy stood up and pushed the bench aside with his knee.

"Come here, Anne," he said, extending his hand, eager to distract himself from his irritating thoughts. She curled her tiny fingers around it and he led her to the wall on their right. A long antique mirror hung there that Anne recognized as her mother's from the 1960's. The glass was framed with carved ivory, and two little cherubs sat at the top wearing the same mysterious smiles that they had on all those years ago. She remembered the afternoons spent playing dress up and standing in awe of her own reflection, taking pride in the idea that she would grow up to look exactly like her mommy. The Sunday hats had been too big and the dresses had pooled around her feet and drooped over her hands, but the resemblance was there. The hope for a future was there.

She stared at her image with a practiced detachment. The frilly white dress and plaited pigtails were like a second skin for her. They were the markers of a stagnant childhood that had outlasted its own innocence, promising an endless fate of hopscotch, jump rope and singing a nursery rhyme that made her sick.

When she tried to look back at Freddy, who overshadowed her from behind, he grabbed her chin and straightened her head. "Keep watching," he told her.

With his other hand, he tugged her braids out and let her hair fall loose as a tingling sensation crawled through her bones. It rushed from her core to the tips of her fingers and toes before radiating out across her skin. She thought he was picking her up for a moment, but her reflection said otherwise, showing elongating legs and a stretching torso. The years that had been stolen from her flashed by in the mirror as her body changed. The lace dress shrunk around her, hardly reaching her now voluptuous thighs. The row of buttons down her back popped off and scattered on the floor. Both seams on the miniature sleeves tore away from her and the entire front of the dress fell forward, exposing soft, rosebud breasts veiled thinly by wisps of her tousled hair.

Freddy rested a hand on the delicate curve of her waist and pulled her hair back over her shoulder. Not a trace of embarrassment showed on Anne's face; her eyes were locked on her morphed reflection. She didn't seem to notice even when Freddy brought his other hand to her lips and touched them, leaving them in a sultry red lipstick that her mother had promised to give her when she was older.

"Was this what you wanted to see?" he asked. She gave no reply, lost in examining every facet of the body that never was.

"I bet you're angry with me for never letting you grow up," he went on. "You probably spend a lot of time thinking about all the stupid little fuckers you never got to make out with at the movies, and the kids you never squeezed out through that pretty cunt of yours."

He still didn't have her full attention. She continued to stare at herself in silence as if she were afraid that looking away would reverse the changes. Freddy loomed behind her, the rough-textured sweater on his broad frame contrasting with the smooth and almost naked nymph pressed against his chest. His usual sly grin died down into an uncharacteristically flat expression. "But that's not all I did."

The changes continued, subtle yet unmistakable: only a slight drooping under her eyes and around her red lips at first. Then the youthful chest began to sink under its own weight, hanging lower over her stomach. A network of spidery varicose veins spread out across her legs and left small lumps on her swollen ankles. The waves of her sleek hair dried out, becoming brittle and drained of their rich color. Every part of her body wilted and sagged in rolls like the wax of a slowly burning candle.

The face staring back at her was not one she recognized or one she had hoped for. The skin on her forehead was dry and crinkled like old tissue paper, and her lips had shriveled, the vibrant red lipstick now a dull burgundy that flaked at the corners of her mouth. Her vision blurred as cataracts clouded her eyes, and the last thing she saw of her body was thinning white hair, sunken cheeks, and the beginnings of decay.

It wasn't until Freddy turned her around that her sight returned. She was shorter again, but didn't dare to look back in the mirror for fear of seeing her own corpse trapped behind the glass. He stroked down the back of her head somewhat tenderly, which struck her as odd until she felt the more familiar discomfort of his fingers twisting into her hair and her head snapping back to look up at him.

"I saved you from that. Don't forget it, you ungrateful little bitch," he growled. "Now, why don't you tell me what you and Nancy were talking about?"

 **xxxxxx**

Nancy shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her white pajama bottoms, lifting her head as the gust of wind died down. Her hair settled around her cheeks again and hung still. The mountainous skyline appeared though a thinning dust cloud, but it didn't look any closer for all her trudging. She wasn't surprised. Time was a lost concept in this world, and the more she pressed forward, the more the ground beneath her felt like a hopelessly large conveyor belt that had been pulling her back for days. But she didn't stop; she walked on with the determination you acquire when there's nowhere to go but straight ahead and nothing to return to but the impressions of your soles in the dirt that brought you to where you stand.

Let the conveyor belt roll. On and on and on…

Numbed by the monotony, she gasped when her toes caught on something. She stumbled forward and turned to look down at a small copper pipe jutting out of the dusty soil. It was bent into a squared U-shape with both ends in the ground, as if it were only the exposed tip of a larger network of pipes buried deep below the earth. She crouched low and touched it, ripping her hand away from the searing heat as a puff of steam leaked from the joint. The plumbing hummed with the faint sound of rushing water.

When she stood back up, two skeletal walls of thick pipes corralled her in from both sides like a hallway. She stepped cautiously between them, following the narrow trail that had been marked for her. A light breeze stirred up the dust on the ground and carried it away to reveal solid concrete. The floor was hard on her blistered toes, and she heard the echo of her own footsteps before she noticed the dank walls around her. Then all at once, she was pulled forward by a godlike force, rushing forward like she herself were the water that pulsed through the pipes. Catwalks, stairways corroded with rust, rattling valves and gauges, clouds of thick steam; everything streaked past her as she flew by. The smell of mold and metallic smoke filled her nostrils as the rest of her surroundings became a speeding blur.

And then her feet were tripping over themselves as she came to a grinding halt. She steadied her wobbling legs and pushed her hair out of her face to see where she had ended up.

"Have a nice stroll? I thought you could use the exercise," Freddy said, leaning against the black furnace with his arms crossed. Smoke curled from the singeing wool fibers of his sweater as he tapped a long, gleaming blade against his upper arm. His clothing was somehow still intact when he pushed off from the searing hot surface. A faint scent of smoke and ashes emanated from beneath his skin, growing stronger as he approached. It stung in her sinus. Nancy fought the instinct to back up and watched him circle her out of the corner of her eye.

"Where are my friends?" she demanded. "Are they still alive?"

"You tell me. How did they look the last time you saw them?" he asked.

She grit her teeth. "Remind me of when that was."

He chuckled, the sound smoldering and churning out from the hot coals in his lungs. "Poor little Nancy. Now you're wondering which parts were real and which parts were just me _fucking_ with you." He stopped directly in front of her. "Well you don't get to know, bitch. My game, my rules."

She squared up to him, wanting to squeeze the answers from his slimy black tongue. But he rerouted the conversation before she could even try.

"I heard you want to make a deal with me," he said.

The shock lasted mere seconds on her face before she suppressed it, narrowing her eyes into a steely blue glare. She was going to ask how he knew about that when he gestured to the corner of the room. Two steps ahead of her, again.

Always.

She saw a motionless heap of lacey white fabric that had been smeared with soot. The pile moved slightly, reluctantly, as if every second of motion caused throbbing pain. Nancy knew who it was before she saw Anne's face. The child sat up, cradling her shattered elbow. Her lip was split near the corner of her mouth and her left eye was swollen shut. A thin, broken vein twisted across her huge eyelid under the shiny purple skin.

"She needed a little coaxing, but my messenger always delivers. Don't you, sweetheart?" he said, glancing over to the pulverized girl.

"Then let's cut the bullshit," Nancy said. She raised her chin to draw herself up. "I'll help you kill those _dream demons_ , or whatever the hell they are, and in exchange, you let me and Anne out of here. I know you need my help."

Freddy bit back the anger simmering in him at her brash tone and toyed with the idea again. Those fuckers may have been the source of his power at one time, but they had overstayed their welcome. The dream demons had become nothing but a pain in his barbecued ass. Pestering him. Demanding kills he couldn't do. But that wasn't the only reason he wanted them dead…

"How could you even put a scratch on them, the weak human you are?" he sneered.

Nancy smirked, praying her lack of confidence wasn't showing through. "By myself, not much. But I've got some help."

"From who, cunt?"

Her smirk grew wider. "Your mother."

A pillar of blue light shot up through the filthy floor of the boiler room, etching white on the walls, on the leaking grid of tangled pipes, and on Nancy and Freddy's squinting faces. The glow brought a powerful force with it that Freddy hadn't invited, and he didn't try to hide his scowl as an old, familiar face hazed through. The white robes had been almost invisible in the blinding glare until the light faded, leaving Amanda Krueger standing in front of them with her gently wrinkled hands clasped. Her silver cross pendant caught the last flicker of the vanishing beam.

Freddy seethed over Nancy with hatred dripping from his calloused lips. That pint-sized cocksucker Anne hadn't told him everything. "Get her the fuck out of here before I-"

"But she came all this way to visit her son. It wouldn't be right to turn her out," Nancy said in a bold, mocking tone that surprised even her. Freddy's blue irises were suspended in blood-shot white for a second as he stared at the insolent little bitch. Who's fucking Dreamscape was this, anyway?

"This monster isn't my son," Amanda said between patient, measured breaths.

Freddy sneered. "Now _there's_ something we can both agree on."

"Bottle up the hatred for a minute, Frederick," said Nancy, keeping an air of calm but trembling on the inside as she stepped between them. A front of confidence was crucial. "We all have a common interest."

That last sentence snapped a viscous chord within him, and he almost barred his teeth. "I have nothing in common with that shriveled up cum-dumpster."

"Sure you do: You're both dead," Nancy offered with a shrug. "Let's help each other."

"How can this whore help me?" Freddy spat.

Nancy froze, kicking herself mentally for not thinking this all the way through. Anne had promised that Amanda was the key, but Nancy hadn't gotten a chance to speak with the woman yet. It wasn't like she could text her on her cell phone. She stared at Amanda and hoped that whatever she had to say was good enough for Freddy.

Amanda cupped her frail hands and held them out as if she were catching a stream of water. From the center of her palms emanated a soft light which materialized into a clear, marble-sized orb. Freddy took a half step back and snarled, sensing the power within it.

"What the fuck is that?" he said.

Not paying him the slightest hint of attention, Amanda held out the orb to Nancy. The girl stared down at it, mesmerized by the whispers of light swirling around inside. Two white circles reflected in her blue eyes as it softly lit the hollows of her face.

"The dream demons share one power source; they are linked. Only one of them needs to swallow this to destroy all three," said Amanda. "You must be the one to bring it to them because the goodness in you will camouflage the purity of this object."

"Alright, we get it, now get the hell out of here you cunt," Freddy barked.

Then with a side-glance to her lost son, she went on in the same even voice, " _He_ cannot carry it. The contrast would be impossible to ignore, and they would know what you're planning the moment they saw him."

Nancy nodded and Freddy grumbled.

"You done?" he asked in a sharp tone.

Finally, Amanda turned to face him. "If you really want to redeem yourself, I can make another one for you to swallow when you're finished."

"Sorry bitch, but you're the only one here that swallows," he said, grabbing his crotch. "Why don't you demonstrate for sweet little Nancy? She might learn something for later."

Nancy had expected to see anger in Amanda's eyes, but instead she saw only sadness and a trace of regret. She slipped the orb into her pocket as the ghost started to fade.

"Wait," Nancy called, "How will I know he'll keep his end of the bargain?"

"Evil is strong," said Amanda, "but never out of balance with blessed holiness. He does not possess the power to break this agreement. I will return to take you and the child, should you succeed…

… _Be brave, Nancy_."

Those last words reached her after the old woman was already gone. They drifted into her ears like a breath, calming her, fortifying her will.

Silence hung between her and Freddy. Neither looked at the other, and far away the dripping from a cracked pipe reverberated off the cement walls. The heart of the furnace behind them roared to life, consuming the pile of whitened coals inside with a fearsome hunger and glowing brighter through the slots in the door. An explosion of sweltering heat filled that corner of the boiler room as flickering red lights blazed across the grimy walls. Shadows quivered behind the pipes, hiding from the harsh purge of firelight. An unearthly growl rumbled out from the latched mouth of the furnace as if roused by Freddy to remind anyone who had forgotten that _he_ was the god of this place.

She made the first move. He lifted his head and tilted his chin up as she extended her hand. Their suspicious glares locked. He closed his charred hand around hers, but they barely shook once before his other hand shot up and clenched onto the back of her head, pulling her close to him. She could smell his rancid breath as he leaned in.

"You aren't trying to trick me, are you?" he warned. "Because if you are, I've got all of eternity to make you suffer for it."

.

.

.

 _To be continued…_

* * *

 **A/N: I swear, the whole time I was writing the scene where Anne is in front of the mirror, I had that song from _Mulan_ stuck in my head ("Whoooooo is that girl I see, staring straight back at me?).  
**

 **Anyways, I watched a great short-film about Freddy's origin on Youtube, and I left the link to it in my profile. I wrote a sufficiently long rant about it _there_ , so I won't write anymore about it _here_.  
**

 **...What are you still doing on this webpage? Go watch it! And thanks for reading. Please leave a review. :)**


	8. The Hunt for Chicken Nuggets

**A/N: So. This is awkward. *Shuffles uncomfortably***

 **It's been... _awhile_ since my last update. Believe me, I've felt like an asshole for not getting this chapter up sooner, but as I said in the announcement on my profile page (in case you missed it), my sister got married and moved far away, my dog died, my current job cut my hours down to part-time (without my consent), I'm starting a second job and dealing with some nasty, sticky financial issues, my brother is recovering from a car accident and my mom broke her foot (and hospital bills are basically excerpts from the Satanic Bible, scrawled out by demons to torment us broke-ass mortals here on earth) AND SO MUCH MORE. It's been a shit-storm in my head, 24/7.**

 **I don't know why I'm spilling my guts to you anonymous internet people (I love you guys, but seriously: this is just TMI). So I'll stop here and leave the gut-spilling to the professionals. Like Freddy.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own A Nightmare on Elm Street or any of its characters.**

 **WARNING: CERTAIN CHAPTERS OF THE FOLLOWING STORY WILL CONTAIN GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, AND ADULT LANGUAGE. TO AVOID SPOILERS, THERE WILL NOT BE INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS FOR EACH CHAPTER.**

* * *

 **Chapter Eight:** **The Hunt for Chicken Nuggets**

Nothing stood between Nancy and the open doorway, but she felt as if a plate of glass kept her from crossing the threshold and reaching the scene that played out inside. She stood stock-still, watching the scrawny little boy drag a chair across the creaking wooden floorboards and climb on top of it to reach the lock on an old liquor cabinet. The keychain rattled in his hands as he twisted it to the left and the glass door swung open. He grabbed a square, brown-tinted bottle and unscrewed the cap before hungrily gulping down the alcohol inside. He drank not with a curiosity to learn about the world of adults, but a need to escape it. Nancy didn't have to wonder why he was doing that for long.

Knowing innately that her words wouldn't penetrate the doorway, she was unable to warn him about the tall, leering figure in a dirty white tank top creeping up from behind. She flinched as the man hit the boy in the side of the head, knocking him off the chair and onto the floor.

"The fuck you doing, boy?" the man snarled.

The boy turned over onto his back, but didn't dare to stand. He stared up at the man with wide, fearful eyes. "I'm sorry, Mr. Underwood. I'm sorry."

"Damn right, you're sorry," said the man, swinging his heavy boot hard into the boy's ribs. "Damn right, you're fucking sorry. I aught to string you up and leave you in the attic for a week, then we'll see how thirsty you are."

Mr. Underwood jammed a thumb behind the strap in his belt buckle and ripped it open, snaking the long brown leather out from around his sagging beer-gut. He glared down at the cracked bottle on its side, pouring a thin stream of bourbon into the floorboards.

"You no-good thief. Look what you did." He crouched down and seized the boy by the back of the head and shoved his face into the expanding puddle of burning alcohol. "You gonna steal my booze, are you?"

The first snap of the belt on his leg split the air. The boy howled, curling onto his side and grabbing his sore thigh. "I'm sorry, Mr. Underwood."

"You straighten the fuck out and take your medicine, boy," he growled. The child let go of himself and lay on his stomach, taking the blows of the belt buckle all over his back, butt, and legs. The dirty, worn-out scraps of clothing he had on did little to protect against the buckle, which tore several new holes in the fabric. His little body trembled, but he held still.

The door slammed shut in Nancy's face. She turned to see Freddy standing further down the twisting hallway, beckoning her forward with a single blade.

"Let's go," he said. "Stop wasting my time."

She caught up to him and followed his frustrated strides past all the open doors as he shut each in his wake. Through them, she saw fragmented glimpses of another life. A kindergarten classroom full of chirping children came into focus on her left. One scrawny blonde boy was thrashing in the grip of two larger boys while a third bully shoved his fingers up the helpless child's nose, pushing it back into a pig-snout. She heard faint snickering from a handful of students while the rest ignored what was happening in the back of the room. The kids were jeering "Oink, piggy! Oink!" and something about a hundred maniacs. Nancy shuddered after the door closed.

The hallway seemed to grow even more narrow, and the walls swelled with breath. The pungent smell of rotten meat radiated from the corridor in waves as if she were walking along a pulsing artery in the bowels of some colossal beast. Her eyes were trained on the next open door.

She recognized the face as belonging to the little bullied boy from the classroom, but he was much older now. He was no less than twelve or thirteen, showing a hint of maturity in the length of his nose and the size of his young jaw. This door in particular made Nancy uncomfortable as she approached it because only a small closet lay on the other side. She could have reached out and touched the boy; he was that close.

The boy stood leering over a petite seven-year-old girl with the skirt of her dress bunched up in her arms. "This is a weird game, Freddy," she said with a tone of complete innocence. "Why do you want to see in my underwear? That's where people _pee_." At that last word, she crinkled her nose in disgust.

"Yeah, it's gross, but show me," he said.

The little girl hesitated.

"Do you want a piggy back ride, or not?" insisted the young Freddy.

"I do."

"Then show me which hole you pee out of."

Nancy was past the doorway at this point, but the conversation followed her down the hall and around the bend. For some reason, Freddy had let that door stay open. He probably got off on it. Fucking pig.

The walls were oozing a translucent pink liquid that trickled down and dripped lazily over the open doorways like thick saliva in a gaping mouth. The floor squished beneath her feet like a sponge, releasing a clear slime that puddled around her shoes before being sucked back down when the weight was lifted.

Grunting, crying, screaming, and noises that she couldn't (or didn't want to) understand mixed into a discordant mess as they flowed out from each door. She refused to look into any of them, keeping her eyes down at the squishing, sucking floor and at the sinking heels of Freddy's black work boots. But one sound floated high above the rest. It contrasted like a tiny burning candle wick against a sheer black void; it was laughter. Not demented, sadistic laughter, but joyful giggling.

A bright backyard with afternoon sunlight pouring over well-kept flowerbeds appeared through a doorway on Nancy's right. The grass rustled, fluffy in some places and trampled into the dirt from play in others. A man in a green polo shirt and khakis was lying on his back with a little girl straddling his waist. Her brown pigtails flopped around on the sides of her head as she bent down to blow a raspberry kiss into the hollow of his neck. She laughed at his expression of mock-offense.

"Oh, you think that's funny, huh?" the man said. "Well now it's daddy's turn."

He flipped the giggling girl off him and pinned her on the ground. Her legs and arms flailed in a vain escape attempt as he tickled her belly.

"Daddy!" she cackled, trying to catch her breath.

"Hold still, baby girl," he said with a smirk. "This won't hurt a bit."

He tickled her until her laughter swelled into happy squeals and screams. Then he loosened his grip enough to let her slide free and chased her around to the trees at the back of the lot, laughing the whole time.

"Daddy's gonna get you, Katherine."

Nancy jumped when the door slammed closed in her face. She hadn't realized that she'd come to a dead stop with Freddy far ahead, waiting in front of a large door at the end of the hallway. She didn't need to see his face to know he was bitter about the scene she had just witnessed. He carried a heavy tension in his shoulders and a stiffness in his back in place of his usual slinky posture. He kept his gaze level and uninterested as Nancy craned her head all the way back to stare up at the imposing slab of oak. The other doors had been of the common variety that you might see in any American home, but not this one. Intricate carvings cascaded down each side and across the top, spelling out words in a language of symbols that she'd never seen in any history book. With a wave of Freddy's blade, it swung open as slowly as the stone door of a mausoleum.

A blinding light cracked along the edge of the doorway, filling the empty space as it opened completely. Freddy grabbed her upper arm and walked through with her. On the other side, the brilliance died down and the door closed itself behind them as Nancy squinted against the overhead glare to survey the world they had entered.

Sloping dunes of golden sand stretched out to the blue horizon, molded by the direction and force of the wind. A huge sun sat alone in the clear sky and released a flood of oppressive heat on the land below. The scorched air in the distance was bent and quivering. Nancy felt her throat already drying and sticking to itself when she swallowed.

"Where are we?" she asked, turning around to see the giant, solitary oak door standing in the sand like a tombstone. The breathing hallway had vanished, and nothing but bleached sand lay on the other side. The thin outlines of two birds soared under the sun, screeching like the banshee.

"Just start walking before we both turn into raisins," he said as he tipped his hat down to shield his eyes. He was staring off in a specific direction as if looking for something, and he pointed toward what Nancy guessed was east. "This way."

She tried to keep up with Freddy's long, angry strides, but the sand sloshed around her feet, making her stumble and slide down the dune. He marched on without looking back.

"Why are we walking?" Nancy groaned. "Can't you teleport us to wherever the hell we're supposed to go?"

Freddy stopped and glared at her from under the shade of his hat. "No. I can't. So shut the fuck up."

"Why not?"

"Because my powers don't work here, you stupid cunt," he growled. "They don't want me bothering them unless it's important, so they make me walk through hell to reach them. It'd be a miracle if we get out of here without sand in our ass cracks."

Nancy shook her head as they continued walking. The sand swallowed her feet with every step, scalding her toes and building up inside her sneakers. Her scalp was hot enough to fry an egg, and it burned the tips of her fingers when she touched it. She winced, fanning her hands out over her head for a small patch of shade. Her raised arms cooked in the sun like a burnt sacrifice as sweat drops trailed down her back and over her stomach, and an uncomfortable dampness collected under the swell of her chest. The white pajama top that she was stuck with in this afterlife clung to her wet skin, soaking up the salty sweat and turning almost transparent. She was glad that Freddy was in front of her. The only thing that could make this situation worse would be his staring at the outline of her bra.

They left long grooves through the sand like snail trails, trudging along under the painful heat. As her mind began to fog, she wondered if Freddy was really leading her somewhere, or just dragging her through the desert for his own amusement. His figure split into doubles, splotched out by purple shapes that appeared and disappeared wherever she looked. After several blinks, he came back into focus. He didn't seem to be enjoying himself.

Nancy watched him, sensing that something was off. Something difficult to pin down. It took a few seconds, but she got it: It was his size. She could have sworn he looked like he was growing. His body got bigger and bigger…and his wide back hit her in the face before she realized that he had stopped and she hadn't.

"Watch where you're going," he shouted. "Ain't there enough space in this whole goddamn desert for two people to walk without slamming into each other?"

"Why did you stop right in front of me?" she asked, her brain switching on again after the break in monotony.

He stretched his back and tilted his fedora up. "We're taking a break."

"Again: _Why_?"

"Because my nuts are sweating," he grumbled, tugging at the overheated bulge in his trousers.

"I don't give a crap about your nuts; it's a hundred and fifty degrees out here, why do you want to drag this trip out any longer than it needs to be?" Nancy asked. She gripped her hips and tried to stand up straight, but the exhausted sagging of her eyelids undercut the message. She was almost ready to pass out too, and they both knew it.

"I always take a break at the bridge," he said, plopping down onto his tired ass. "Stop asking so many fucking questions. You're annoying the hell out of me."

Looking past him, she saw a deep ravine carved into the earth. The bottom - if it existed at all - was concealed in darkness, giving the impression that two halves of the world were joined here and held together by one long, rickety bridge. The planks of wood were faded and cracked from the sun, and some were split down the center, dangling from a few rusty nails. The railings were broken in several spots; the unbroken parts didn't look like they could support the weight of a kitten's paw without snapping.

"What-"

"Don't ask what a bridge is doing here. I had nothing to do with the creation of this oversized sandbox," he snapped.

Letting her legs collapse under her, she sat in the sand a few feet from Freddy. She thought for a second that she might just lie back and let the sun fry her like bacon, crispy and crunchy. Maybe if she died again she'd end up in the right place.

She glanced at Freddy, scanning his winter clothes with a cringe. Boots. Gloves (technically, _glove_ ), thick trousers, a hat, and worst of all…"It's so fucking hot here. How can you wear that sweater?"

"You think _this_ is heat, bitch?" he scoffed. "Try being burned alive."

"I'm working on that," she muttered before falling flat on her back. The edges of the sun blazed in the vast, empty sky above her.

"Let me see that orb," he said. When she sat up to look at him, he already had his gloved hand extended. The blades twitched impatiently.

"Hell no," Nancy said, folding her arms. "Amanda told you not to touch it."

"She said it was dangerous to touch it _in front_ of those fuckers, not out in the middle of nowhere. Hand it over."

"Tough shit, Kruger. I said no," Nancy spat.

Lunging forward, he grabbed her arm and pulled her into him. "Give it to me _now_."

"Screw you," she said as she tried to push him away. He wrestled down her other arm before getting kneed in his nuts, which were now throbbing in pain in addition to sweating. She crawled backwards as quickly as her groggy limbs would allow, collecting a pile of hot sand at her back. A rough hand clamped onto her ankle and yanked her closer, and the sand slid up into her shirt and coated her sticky body. She thrashed as he dug through her pockets.

"Where is it?" he growled, patting her down. His eyes lit up when he reached around to her back pocket and felt the bump. He slipped a hand inside to pick it up, giving her butt a few squeezes before she ripped herself free.

"Give it back," she said. She sprung to her feet, but he was on the bridge before she could reach him. The structure creaked under his weight; she didn't have the nerve to put even one toe on the first plank. She stood on the sand, glaring at him. "Bring it here, Kruger. Stop messing around."

"Come and get it, bitch," he called, rotating the orb to examine every side of it. It didn't look like much; just a little white ball. Who could guess that cracking it open would release enough power to destroy three immortal sacks of shit like the dream demons?

 _Just do it,_ Nancy told herself. _Do it_.

She shifted her weight onto the edge of the bridge. The first board didn't crack, but she hadn't expected it to: it was firmly embedded in the earth. The second board didn't crack. With the cautious precision of a surgical slice, she slid her foot farther out to test the bridge's strength. It seemed like it would hold her.

"Krueger, come on," she said, inching closer. "You're acting like a little kid. Why don't you… _holy shit look out!_ "

But he didn't look up in time. He was staring into the gleam of the orb, and so was the giant crow that swooped in and plucked it out of his hand, knocking him down. He tumbled over the broken-down railing but managed to grab onto the edge of one of the planks. His hat slipped off and disappeared into the darkness below as his legs dangled over the abyss.

"What the fuck did I tell you?" Nancy shouted.

The tips of his blades scratched the wood in a failing attempt to get a better grip. He snarled at her. "Is now really the time for that?"

Nancy froze, staring at the huge bird as it flexed its shiny black wings. Two heads branched out from the base of its neck, and both sets of eyes revealed a keen intelligence. It held the orb in one beak while the other head tilted to the right and to the left, examining the shiny new toy.

"Drop that right now or I'll have you for dinner tonight, chicken nuggets," Freddy said. The tip of one knife poked at the crow's dry, cracked talons. The head that held the orb leaned in as if to show off its prize, and the other head pecked at Freddy's burnt skull.

"You little feathered fucker," he snapped, cringing away from the sharp drill of its beak. "Nancy, what the fuck is taking you so long?"

Nancy edged closer, wanting to run to the bird but terrified of every creak and crack that she made in the planks beneath her. She slid her feet along in three-inch increments: certified snail speed. The crow rolled one set of eyes up to glance at her as she approached. It left Freddy, rushing forward on the narrow bridge and puffing its neck feathers. It fanned out its wings and raised itself up until it was almost as tall as she was, leering at her in an obvious display of intimidation. She stumbled back as it spread its wings as wide as a car and beat them against the scorching air. Then it took off, soaring high over the sand dunes across the gorge.

She bent down to offer Freddy a hand, which he took ungratefully before scrambling up onto the bridge. A thin cloud of dry dirt puffed out from under him as he plopped onto his back. His chest was heaving. Not even ten seconds had passed before he jumped to his feet, storming across to the other side of the gorge. Nancy clung to the flimsy railing.

"I ain't carrying you, so move your ass," he called over his shoulder. "If we don't get that stupid fucking marble back before the crow swallows it, we're screwed."

"You don't have a back-up plan? Can we get another orb from Amanda?"

"I'm not talking about the _plan_ ," Freddy snarled. "If chicken nuggets eats it, it'll release all the light inside and those demons will come flying over to see what the hell is going on, and they'll be pretty fucking curious to know why we're trying to smuggle an orb as pure as an angel's vagina into their palace, and _then_ -"

He stopped, turning around to glare at Nancy. She was in the process of carefully shifting her weight to her left foot, and she was maybe, _maybe_ two feet closer than she was a minute ago.

"I said _move your ass_ ," Freddy growled, twitching his blades more from impatience than as a threat. "Move. Your. Sweet. Little. Fucking. Ass. Or I'll come over there and tear you a new hole."

With a new and sudden sense of urgency, she sprinted over the bowing, cracking planks of wood. Her jaw was clenched and her body was wound up like an over-wrung bath towel, bracing for a fall as if each step would be her last. Her shoulders relaxed when she splashed onto the ground on the other side.

"It went that way, down towards those dunes," Freddy said, ignoring her breathless heaving, and pointing with his index blade. "I think I saw it land."

They climbed dune after dune, sand sloshing around their shoes as their feet sunk in with each step. The wind caught a trace amount of cascading sand and carried it away in thin sheets. It lashed at Nancy's skin. She tugged the collar of her blouse up over her mouth and nose like a mask to keep the dust out of her throat.

As they descended the other side of the slope, with sand flowing down into their shoes, she squinted at a flat, blurry strip of blue nestled between two high dunes. The air bent the image, making it twist and shake, but she could see it as clearly as her own hand in front of her face.

"It's water," she croaked, lifting a limp finger to point straight ahead. Freddy trudged up beside her and squinted against the glare from the flaming sun.

"That's just a mirage, you moron," he snarled weakly with the last bit of moisture in his throat. A hacking, wheezing cough seized him as a puff of dust invaded his airways. His lips, already cracked from the fire that took his life years ago, split even more in the merciless heat. They fused together with the sticky saliva he tried to wet them with.

They dragged their burning feet, one after the other, and soon the high sand dunes were towering above them like golden mountains. Nancy craned her neck, shuddering at the thought of climbing the dauntingly steep slope. She lifted her foot like a robot with drained batteries.

She was panting thin breaths with her head hanging low by the time they reached the top. Freddy wasn't making any sound at all, and she turned back half expecting to see him lying facedown in the sand, sizzling like ham in a skillet. But he was still on his feet, and he looked like he was holding his breath.

"You motherfucker. You were right," he breathed.

At the base of the dune, bouncy young palm trees had popped up around a large pool of blue water. Their wide, smooth leaves rustled in the desert breeze, casting an inviting shade on the ground beneath them. Taller trees loomed around the other side of the water with bending, bleached trunks that peeled in the sun. The surface of the pool glistened white along the edges and at the peak of every tiny ripple.

Without another word, Nancy slid down the dune on one outstretched leg, letting the other collapse under her. A tailwind of dust blew out behind her, and it engulfed Freddy as he tried to follow with staggering, irritated steps. She tumbled out over herself at the bottom, crawling on hands and knees to the water's edge. Her fingertips broke the surface slowly, as if she were afraid to discover that it was all an illusion. But the cool wetness on her hands was real (at least, as real as anything could be to a disembodied soul), and her head bobbed low in anticipation of a long, satisfying drink. Her parched lips stretched out towards the rippling water, already tasting the refreshing liquid in her mind. Relief was so close.

"Don't drink that."

That couldn't have been Freddy's voice telling her not to drink this wonderful, God-sent water. It couldn't have been Freddy's rough hands grabbing at her, pulling her away from the edge of the pool, holding her back in spite of all her thrashing. Not even Freddy could be that cruel. If she hadn't known his voice better than anyone else's and seen his striped sweater-clad arms around her, she wouldn't have believed that he was doing this.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she shouted, clawing at his arms like an animal, "Let me go! It's water, right there. _Right there_."

Her tongue, her lips, and her throat felt as if they would tear themselves away from the rest of her body to reach the water if they had to. Her mouth hung open, her tongue lulling off to the side like a dead, shriveled slug. "Please," she whispered.

"Take a closer look," Freddy said, "I knew there was a reason those bastards would plant an oasis in the middle of this hell-hole. I said _look_."

Nancy crawled again to the edge of the pool, this time peering down into its depths. It was far deeper than she had expected, and what lurked in the dark water almost looked beautiful until she understood what it was. Droves of bloated corpses drifted along with an undercurrent through the drowned ruins of an ancient city. It carried them past crumbled stone towers and through the holes and archways in the decrepit wall that enclosed many of the central buildings. The people's limbs were weightless around them and brushed against other bodies that drifted nearby. Some grazed the black algae that coated parts of the thick, porous stone. Their hair trailed behind them, curling and swishing in the absence of gravity. Around and around they went in an endlessly-circling whirlpool, driven on by a current that flowed from nowhere and to nothing. She widened her eyes and stared down as if gazing at the expanse of the world through a small window.

One of the bodies caught her eye as it floated higher towards the surface. A mat of long black hair on the back of its head swayed in the water like tangled seaweed. The skin on its naked back was wrinkled and bubbled out in a few places, looking almost detached from the bones and decaying muscle beneath it. With a shift of the current, the body turned slowly like a pig on a spit, and a stream of water swept the hair away from its face as it turned belly-up.

A wide pair of lidless eyes darted up at the bright surface of the pool but never settled on anything, as if following the chaotic path of a buzzing fly. Its gaze flickered over Nancy, and as it tried to open its mouth, one side of its rotting jaw came unhinged. She reeled back from the edge, falling into the warm sand beneath a shady palm tree.

"It's still alive," she said, feeling a wave of nausea come over her. She tried to settle herself; vomiting now would knock her unconscious, and that was the last thing she needed.

"That's what they get for drinking the water. But go ahead and have a sip if you feel like joining them," Freddy said. His voice was a low grumble with only an obligatory trace of anger. He sounded more weary than anything. "Dumb-ass."

A brief rustling sound distracted Nancy from the energy-wasting words she was about to spit at him. They turned and looked up at two sets of gleaming black eyes. The crow sat perched on a gently sloping branch, letting its heads cock this way and that way as it watched them. Its black breast feathers puffed with pride, and the orb glimmered from between the tapered points of its beak.

Freddy snarled and twitched his blades. "Don't get cocky with me, chicken nuggets."

The crow's eyelids drooped like a snobby billionaire.

"You motherfucker," he said, charging at the base of the tree. He clutched onto the narrow trunk and tried to dig his heels into the smooth surface. "I'm gonna fry you up and dip you in ketchup."

The tips of his claws left ruts in the tree as he slipped down and landed squarely on his backside. He dusted himself off, muttering every conceivable combination of swear words. Then he locked in on Nancy.

"I'm too old for this shit," he said.

"…and?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.

"And you're young. Nimble."

"What the fuck does _that_ mean?" Nancy said. "You're the one with the knives. _You_ go up and get it. That thing will peck a hole in my skull."

He rolled his eyes. "Who gives a shit? You're already dead."

"Yes I am, and that's just one more reason why I'm not taking a beak to the face for you. It's your fault the damn thing got the orb in the first place," she said, propping her hands on her hips.

"Fine then, bitch," he said as he walked past her along their trail of footprints. "We can turn around and go back to the boiler room for all I care. I'll find another way to kill those fuckers, and you can stay caged up like a dog in one of my caves for the rest of eternity."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, trying to suppress the worried quirk in her eyebrows. He'd said before that it was in both of their best interests to retrieve the orb before it… _detonates_ , for lack of a better word. The dream demons would be after him before he even reached the doorway that brought them here. "You wouldn't risk getting caught," she said. But Freddy could hear the uncertainty in her voice, and he knew he'd won.

He was part-way up the slope when he stopped and looked over his shoulder. "Yes I would. If you want to earn your way out of here, then you better pull your fucking weight."

Her jaw tightened. She wanted to lash out and scream at him, but she knew that wouldn't do any good. The crow was still sitting high above them like a king enjoying a show put on by his court jesters. It let the orb roll back over its thin tongue as if toying with the idea of swallowing it.

"Alright," she grumbled. "You pain in the ass."

"That's my girl," he said with a smirk as she dragged her feet over to the tree. Placing both hands against the slim trunk, she craned her neck back. The angle made the sun-edged palm leaves seem impossibly far away.

" _Here we go,_ " she said under her breath before narrowing her focus, inhaling, and latching onto the tree. She scrambled to lift her feet and settle them against the trunk. They wobbled on a dangerous angle. Squeezing her leg muscles for all they were worth, she inched her trembling hands higher and tightened her grip again to draw her legs up. The sweat from her palms slicked the trunk, turning the bone-dry dust on the bark into streaks of damp dirt. Beads of perspiration accumulated at her hairline and threatened to drip into her squinted eyes.

And then the falter.

Her foot slipped, undoing the careful balance that kept her steady, and she slid down the smooth trunk, hands burning raw, mouth opened to scream but too surprised to make a sound.

"You clumsy cunt," Freddy said after he'd stopped her mid-descent. His arms were braced against her thighs, holding her up so she could regain her footing. She didn't respond to the insults, but fired a glare that he couldn't see up at the crown of palm leaves when she felt his hands shifting to a different position.

"Get your hands off my ass, Krueger," she yelled.

He cupped a fleshy swell in each palm, pushing into it to lift her higher. "Only trying to help," he snickered as he gave her left cheek a squeeze.

With unprecedented speed and strength, Nancy climbed up the trunk and away from his lecherous grasp. His outstretched fingertips were the last thing she felt on her bottom. "You're a pig," she called down to him.

"…What'd you say?" he asked. "I was distracted by the view."

Her face burned with rage and embarrassment as she heard the smirk in his voice and sensed his wolfish gaze locked on her butt. The fact that her entire body was wrapped around a giant phallic symbol didn't help, either. She grimaced.

He seemed to pick up on her discomfort, and, as if reading her mind, he grinned. "Give those coconuts up there a nice little massage for me."

And that was the end of her patience. Nancy snapped her face down to snarl at him. "Krueger, you motherfucker," she screamed, "You're gonna eat sand when I get down there. I'm sick of you acting like you can say and do whatever the hell you-"

Her rant was cut short by a tiny tap-tap-taping on her head. She looked back up, staring into a set of black eyes, gleaming and curious. But the curiosity didn't last long before it was replaced with boredom, and the crow drilled its beak into her forehead.

"Ow," she yelled, flinching away, "knock it off."

"Get the orb, you dumb bitch," Freddy reminded her. She squinted to see through the blur of her eyelashes, reaching past the head that barraged her with nips and stabs, reaching closer to the other head that had stretched itself away from her. It was almost within her grasp.

"Shit," Nancy gasped. The bird raised itself to deliver a powerful peck that embedded its beak into the skin above her eyebrow, and she yanked her face away too quickly. Her arms couldn't support the strain of her jerking movements, losing strength and slipping. She clamped onto one of its thin, rough legs before sailing backwards through the air, forgetting the unbearable heat in the rush of wind. The blistering sun, the sweat soaking her clothes, the stinging cuts on her face, and (of course) the giant cranky bird on top of her all disappeared from her thoughts until she blinked away the head trauma and found herself on her back in the sand. The crow's other massive claw was closed on her shirt, its crushing mass keeping the air from returning to her lungs as it continued to barrage her head with its beak.

It was fast and angry and unrelenting. Overwhelming. She couldn't move or scream, wondering if it was possible for her to die a second time, and if this ugly crow-head hammering down on her would be the last thing she'd ever see.

And then it was over. The pecking stopped. A splatter of hot liquid hit her neck as she heard the squelching sound of knives in flesh. The bird dropped dead on top of her, and she squirmed to free herself out from under the oppressive weight, seeing Freddy standing over them with red-soaked finger blades. Giving the crow one hard shove with his foot, he kicked it off of her and it rolled to the ground. Sand stuck to the open wound that ran through the base of its two necks.

He ignored Nancy, stepping over her like she were just another corpse and bending to retrieve the orb from the crows twisted, lifeless beak. He shined it on his elbow and lifted it up to see it in the sunlight.

He tossed it to her as she was standing to her feet and dusting herself off, and she snatched it out of the air. Her head throbbed a second later. She clutched it, brushing her fingers over the scattered cuts on her forehead.

"Let's go; haul ass, princess," he said, already hiking up the next sand dune. She jogged clumsily through the sloshing sand to catch up with him. Their feet sunk and slid down with every step, but soon enough they reached the peak and stopped. Freddy shielded his eyes with his hand to stare far into the distance, and Nancy did the same. Beyond the rolling slopes of white sand and puffing clouds of dust sat the hazy purple silhouette of a palace, distorted in the rippling heat.

.

.

.

 _To be continued…_

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 **A/N: Well, there you have it, folks. I hope that extra-long chapter made up for my hiatus. The next chapter will be posted in a more timely manner, but I can't promise any specific date. My schedule is just too unpredictable right now.  
Ah, how I miss the summers when I had nothing to do all day but sit in my room and type-tippity-type my stories until the sun went down...**

 **If you have a spare minute, please let me know what you think of this chapter (or the story in general, if you're so inclined).**


	9. Fresh and Young

**A/N: It is finished! Hallelujah! I know I promised that this chapter would be posted faster than the last one, but I'm only human. Life gets in the way. I swear to you guys that I will not drop this story; it will be completed, if it's the last thing I do. So help me God.**

 **Thank you to Darkness Takes Over, thatredheadedchick, The-Original-Mystic, and Germany11 for reviewing chapter eight, and thank you to all the people who have followed and reviewed _Wake_. You're what draws me back in when I feel like quitting. **

**(And side note to my favorite redhead: I have a feeling you're going to enjoy this chapter, specifically.)**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own A Nightmare on Elm Street or any of its characters.**

 **WARNING: CERTAIN CHAPTERS OF THE FOLLOWING STORY WILL CONTAIN GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, AND ADULT LANGUAGE. TO AVOID SPOILERS, THERE WILL NOT BE INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS FOR EACH CHAPTER.**

* * *

 **Chapter Nine:** **Fresh and Young**

Ropes of incense snaked through the air as Nancy kept pace with Krueger's easy strides. They curved around her body, enticing her down the grand walkway and clouding her vision. The gaps in the smoke revealed unearthly luxuries like polished marble floors, statues and curtains edged in gold, and diamonds encrusted in the hellish murals along the walls. Blocking out the painted depictions of torture, she lowered her head, but found her senses overwhelmed in other ways: Strongly scented smoke burned her lungs and dripped down the back of her throat as she caught echoes of moans, screams, and stabbing, insane cackles from somewhere deep within the desert palace. The colossal doors drew shut behind her and Freddy, sealing them in.

Between two huge columns carved from white stone, Nancy saw glimpses of a room lit with low-hanging candelabras. The searing white wax dripped onto the tangles of naked bodies below as they thrust against one another in endless ecstasy and pain. Some had twisted themselves into unimaginable positions that would have broken the bones of a living human. The people's eyes were hooded and glazed, their consciousness abandoned centuries ago on the lavish couches and canopied beds beneath them. The pungent smell of lust floated into Nancy's nostrils, repulsive to her mind yet intriguing to the ghost of her flesh.

Freddy pulled her forward, uncharacteristically disinterested in the scene. She glanced up at him and saw that his eyes were narrowed and fixed straight ahead. She caught one last glance at the sweat-slicked bodies before leaving the orgy behind her.

He led her to a curtained archway at the end of the hall that was guarded by two bleached skeletons. Their bones were long and thin, decorated with the same language of carvings that she'd seen on the door to the desert, and they towered over both of the visitors. Nancy stared up at the one closest to her, searching its hollow eye sockets for a sign of life. Her gaze was returned with only empty blackness. Freddy groaned as the guard on the left reached over to draw back half of the curtain in ceremoniously slow motion. Nancy would have flinched if not for all the nightmarish things she'd already seen in this world. Instead, she calmly reached into her pocket and clasped the orb. Her mind was going numb to the bizarre and horrific; she wasn't sure that anything could disgust her anymore.

She would retract that thought within the hour.

The room they entered had a high ceiling and a single, intricately tiered chandelier hanging from the center. Blue flames clung to the wilting candles, casting a surreal glow onto the obsidian thrones along the far wall. Three black forms slouched in each seat like enormous slugs with misshapen skulls, and they paid no attention to their guests. Spidery arms extended from their sides to pick at the gluttonous heaps of food that were spread around them; one lifted a ripe purple grape dripping with dew, examined it, and rejected it to the floor. It perused the layers upon layers of fruits and savory meats, slumping back into its throne dissatisfied. Nancy watched it tap its needle-thin fingers along the armrest with an air of agitated boredom.

The largest one, which sat in the middle throne, beckoned her and Freddy forward before dropping a seasoned cube of dark meat into its gaping mouth. Nancy stared at the jagged, skeletal teeth that closed on the morsel, and she knew that if her hand was caught in its jaws she wouldn't be getting it back.

"What do you want, Krueger?" snapped the small one.

Freddy bit back whatever snide remark had popped into his head and spoke - to Nancy's surprise - complacently. "You got it all wrong," he said, "I'm not here to ask for anything."

"Then why has a selfish piece of scum like you crawled all the way through the desert to see us?" asked the medium-sized one. So far, none of them had even glanced at her, and she wished it could have stayed that way.

"Look fellas, I know I haven't been bringing in many souls lately-"

" _Any_ souls lately," it corrected him.

Nancy was close enough to hear Freddy grind his teeth for the briefest moment. "Yeah. Well, I don't want you boys thinking I'm ungrateful for the power you gave me…so I wanna give _you_ something."

"A gift," mused the middle one, and all at once their attention locked on Nancy. She fidgeted, eyes darting around and down at the polished floor.

The small one broke the silence. "Send her up."

Freddy nudged her in the back and she dug in her heels, forgetting her mission in the face of those creatures. Her instinct said to keep as much distance as possible between herself and them, but after another hard shove, she stumbled forward. She felt Freddy's frustrated glare on the back of her head, urging her on. The thrones were elevated slightly above the main floor, and she stopped at the bottom step. The large one motioned for her to spin around, showing the deceptively long reach of its arms. Her body went as stiff as a board as she turned once around to meet their scrutinizing gazes again. The demon leaned forward and eyed her head to toe. Then it snapped its needle-fingers.

The sharp sound cracked the air, and Nancy looked down to see her standard-issue pajamas vanish. They were replaced by a garment of sheer blue silk which left little of her body to the imagination. Her breasts swelled out from the loosely draped neckline on the front and the sides, and a crisscrossing layer of fine golden cord cinched her waist. Tinkling gold plates adorned the intricately-laced material on her hips, stirring at her slightest movement. The curve of her thighs peeked out on both sides of the double-slit.

" _That's better_ ," said the demon, "I never understood why human women these past few centuries have dressed like such idiots."

Nancy's brow quirked. This asshole had a problem with the way _she_ dressed? Westin Hills pajamas may not have been the height of fashion, but at least she _wore_ clothes. These lumpy, slimy little bastards should learn from her example before they criticize.

"Music," called the small demon. Within seconds, a tambourine began to rattle from some unseen place as the hypnotic sound of string instruments joined in. The ancient rhythm filled the room, and Nancy swallowed hard. She knew what was coming next.

"Dance for us, human," rasped the largest one.

She cringed. "Um, I'm not a very good dancer…Your Majesty. Maybe I could just-"

"DANCE," it roared, shaking the room. Nancy flinched back half a step and resigned herself to the awkwardness to follow.

"Alright, alright," she muttered. "No need to yell."

Balling her hands into fists, she brought them up by her head and began pumping them into the air. She stepped from side to side and rocked her hips, completely out of sync with the languorous, exotic melody. Beads of sweat flew from her thrashing hair as she rocked out to whatever Eighties aerobic exercise video was playing in her mind.

The Dream Demons were not impressed.

"The human has no skill in dancing," said the large one to the small.

Nancy ignored them and glanced over her shoulder to find Freddy admiring her butt. She shot him a scornful glare as she stuck out her elbows and began twisting at the waist. How long was this fucking song? It had better end soon, because she was running out of dance moves. Not that she had many to start with.

"That's enough," said the medium-sized demon, carelessly waving his hand to silence the instruments.

No one had to say it twice; the humiliated girl was glad to return to her rigid, uncomfortable posture.

"I sense a strong force of good within her," said the large demon. Nancy tensed, squeezing the orb in her hand and praying they hadn't noticed it. Her pulse picked up under their suspicious stares.

The small one leaned closer to Nancy. "I sensed it too; this one will be a pleasure to corrupt."

As it signaled for her to approach, a bulge of black, mucous-covered flesh erupted from between its legs. The other two grew similar appendages and cackled, and Nancy felt the bile rising in her throat. It tasted like acid. She fought it down, mounting the lowest step. The slinky dress slipped between her legs as she walked, but she paid no attention to it; her focus was on the huge, open mouth of the largest dream demon. It roared with laughter, head tipping back in revelry. If she could get close enough, all she'd have to do is drop the orb inside.

She inched towards the creature. All three of them were lost in their amusement; they weren't watching her. Slowly, cautiously, she brought her trembling fist up towards its teeth. A string of saliva spilled out from between them and splashed onto its bloated stomach. She flinched back, but drew closer a second later, making up for the lost seconds.

"What's in your hand?" said the smallest one, recovering first from the laughter. The other two sobered instantly. They stared at her as she pulled back her fist and hid it behind her thigh.

"Nothing," she answered. "There's nothing in my hand; I was only trying to make myself useful and clean the drool off your chest. I thought that's what you wanted."

"What we _want_ ," said the large demon, frothing in rage at her insolence, "is for you to stop talking back and open your hand."

It smacked her in the side of her head, and she tumbled backwards down the stairs. The gold plates tinkled like spilled beads when she hit the floor. Her vision swam for a few seconds as she blinked the blurriness away, cramming the orb into her mouth.

The large demon exhaled, counting his frustrations. "She can't dance, she's disobedient: is your gift good for _anything_?"

Its infuriated gaze roamed over the contours of her figure. She lay on her side, struggling to get up, with the high slit revealing the bottom half of her butt. Its glare softened into something perverse, and Freddy saw his chance to redeem himself: "She's good for a lot of things, boys. As you can see."

The medium-sized demon lounged against the arm of his throne. "Why don't you _demonstrate_ for us?"

"I'd love to," he growled with a nasty smile, tugging down his fly. Nancy sat up and crawled backwards as he approached. His predatory eyes flashed from under the rim of his old fedora. He cornered her against the wall of the chamber and seized her wrist. "Oh, no, Nancy. We don't wanna hide back here; they'll miss the show."

He dragged her back into the center of the floor and threw her down, straddling her bare, thrashing hips. The more she bucked against him, the more excited he got. He popped off the button on his trousers and licked up a trickle of sweat from the side of her neck.

"Krueger," said the large demon. "This woman is a virgin. Leave that for us."

Freddy groaned and yanked his pants shut. The cock-tease left him bitter, and Nancy felt that frustration coming off him in waves as he shoved a rough hand between her legs. She wanted to scream obscenities into his ugly face, but her lips were sealed to contain the orb. His fingers abused her sensitive pink flesh without restraint, and he leered down at her, savoring the hopeless terror in her eyes. He rubbed up and down between her folds at a frantic speed that her nerves couldn't ignore.

She jerked against him, grabbing at his arms in a failing attempt to shove him off. He enjoyed her little struggle; it was useless. He was far stronger. He let her squirm out from under him for a moment before yanking her in again, this time with her back tight against his chest. Slipping an arm around the underside of her thigh, he raised her leg and spread it wide from the other. He tore aside the flimsy silk that had barely shielded her from the Dream Demon's view and let them watch as he returned to his work.

If he couldn't come, she was gong to have to do it instead. Whether she liked it or not.

He pressed his fingertips into her swelling nub and rubbed it mercilessly. Within minutes, she was twitching and choking back cries. He heard the distressed noises tangle up in her throat.

"If you want me to stop, Nancy," he teased, "all you have to do is ask."

She clenched her jaw, feeling herself growing warmer. Freddy glanced down to see a drop of clear liquid trickle from below his hand. When her toes curled in, he stopped. He didn't want this to be over _too_ quickly.

The hand that was hooked around her leg reached up to grasp her plump, jiggling breast, spreading her legs even farther apart. He thrust two charred fingers inside her and pumped them in and out at a brutal pace. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her face contort from the pain. He forced a third finger in, pounding into her like he were trying to satisfy his own throbbing erection.

Hot angry tears threatened to fall on her flushed face. Everything in her mind was disgust. Disgust for him, disgust for the hungry sets of eyes watching her, disgust with her own body for not shutting down and going numb. Why couldn't there be a switch in her mind that turned everything off? Why did she have to feel it all? And the disgust grew inside her stomach, infusing with the pleasure. Swallowing it.

Her legs had begun to stiffen. Her back writhed against his chest in direct disobedience to her will. All she could do was keep her mouth sealed and choke down the screams and groans. She was aware of the winding-up in her belly that would soon break into spasms. With a clenched jaw and a hammering heartbeat, she fought it. But it was a losing battle. Control was slipping out of her tight fists. His hand drew it out of her. She was slipping.

"That's good, Krueger. Enough."

He ceased, resting his still hand on her inner thigh. "But she isn't finished yet," he informed them, brushing his fingertips over her slit. She shuddered, so very close to exploding. He licked his teeth, momentarily forgetting his overlords as he teased her twitching flesh again, light as a feather.

The largest demon glared at him. "You've had enough fun. We'll finish her."

"Come to us, woman," called the small one. Nancy stood up, legs shaking like a newborn colt. She hesitated and stared at the floor, not wanting to look at the monster behind her or the monsters in front of her. She tried to wish them away. Freddy got to his feet with a groan.

"Behave and do what you're told," he snarled, shoving her forward. " _Move_ , bitch."

She staggered across the floor and up the steps. One of her breasts had fallen loose from the struggle, but she didn't care. She wasn't human anymore. She was a disgusting carcass that only looked fresh and young on the outside.

"Sit," hissed the large demon, patting its lap. Nancy sat on the slimy, bulbous slug and stared up at the chandelier. Its erection stuck out like a flagpole beside her. It ran its spindly fingers through her hair, lifting a few wavy stands to the blue light to admire them. "Did you see our little _menagerie_ of humans on the way in?"

She nodded lifelessly.

"You'll make a wonderful new addition," the medium-sized one said.

The large one continued playing with her hair. "We had a human woman like you decades ago. The same hair. Same lips. You may have seen her with the rest."

Nancy gave no response.

"She tried to fight us the first time we took her. And do you know what we did?"

She stared on.

"We broke her spine. Into three separate parts," it whispered.

"But we're not going to have any trouble like that from you, will we?" Asked the small one, snickering.

No response.

"Answer me, you little human _whore_!"

Most people would have flinched. Nancy didn't; she only gave a slow nod.

"Good," it said, rolling its long dark tongue over its bottom jaw. "Now kiss me."

It fisted her hair into a knot and jerked her head back. Steaming lusty breath leaked from between its teeth, rippling over Nancy's dull face. The smell woke her from her trance.

She had to get out of here. And the only way out was in.

She leaned up and clashed her lips against the putrid, skeletal mouth. Its tongue slithered past her lips, and she reciprocated. They tangled; they twisted. And when it had begun to retreat for air, she pursued it and leaned in farther to connect mouths again. The demon grinned. With its mouth open and guard lowered, she tongued the orb out of the pocket of her cheek and shoved it down the monster's throat. She leapt away. Its breath hitched.

Glowing fractures crawled over its body, splitting its skin as it gagged. The light broke through in sharp beams from deep inside, and the creature slid from its throne. Within seconds, shards of light tore apart the other two demons. They fell to the polished marble floor, writhing and gasping.

Freddy watched with a satisfied smirk and slid on a pair of black sunglasses. The three dark slugs shriveled down, withering away like flopping fish in sun-baked sand. Then they lay on the floor motionlessly, no bigger than Nancy's fist. Freddy slunk toward them with relish in every step. He stooped to pick one up by the tail, dangling it over his open mouth before crushing its skull in his teeth. After chewing and swallowing the other two, he tossed his chin toward the exit and Nancy followed him out.

The hall they had entered by was lined on both sides with the naked souls from the orgy. They stood without shame or self-awareness, and Nancy stared at their bodies that had been worn and abused in infinite ways. Each one bowed to her and Freddy as they walked by, both rows folding over into a prostrate wave that ushered them out. The enormous doors waited for them at the end of the procession. Freddy blasted them open with a flick of his finger-blade and they strolled out into the scorching desert.

Nancy watched him cautiously from out of the corner of her eye as they started the trek back to the world they'd come from. Something about him was different. His movements seemed to be infused with a power he hadn't possessed before. At the peak of a sand dune maybe two hundred yards out, he stopped suddenly as if he'd forgotten something. Then he shot a half-glance at the desert palace over his shoulder and snapped his fingers. There was no resistance; the entire structure collapsed in on itself, flattening into rubble, souls and all. A pathetic cloud of dust swelled into the bending air above it.

 **xxxxxx**

Amanda Krueger's face was serene and delicate like an old china plate. She stood at the altar of the church from Nancy's nightmare, hands closed over her cross pendant. It seemed impossible that someone who looked so much like the mother of God could have been the mother of evil itself.

Nancy wanted to run to the woman, straight into her arms, and dissolve into a spirit like steam. She wanted to forget flesh and blood and pain; to forget her family, even, if it meant finding peace. But she stayed beside Freddy as they walked past the dusty, dilapidated pews with Ann following at their heels. A door stood open behind the nun, filled with a peachy glow like a warm sunset. Like rest. So different from the cold dead white of the church house.

When Freddy reached the front pew, he stopped. Nancy (in Westin Hills pajamas once again) took a hesitant step past him, expecting him to seize her by the arm. He didn't. She took Anne's tiny hand and led her up. Amanda smiled at them. "Come on, children. I'll take you now."

The promise of eternal peace waited for her, moments away, like a pen poised to blot out a lifetime story of suffering. Sleep was calling - sleep without dreams, a disconnect from her own mind and the hellish memories trapped within it. Thoughts of her father and mother flickered out like a dying bulb. The world behind her fell away, and she knew she wouldn't miss it. You can't miss what you don't remember.

Anne slipped from her grasp to clutch at Amanda's robes. The light welcomed them as they stepped through the doorway, edging the child's lacey dress and the slender old woman's white habit before enfolding them. As Nancy watched them fade, a temperate breath from the other side of the threshold ghosted over her skin. It hushed her common sense and reason so that she didn't realize why the air stirred until it was too late.

The doors were closing. And they were closed before her heart could drop into the freezing acid pit of her stomach.

Closed. Shut. Sealed.

"You didn't think I was gonna let you go that easily?"

After several meaningless bangs of her fist against the wood, Nancy whipped around. Hatred burned red in her eyes as they strained to see through the sting. Her lashes matted with numb tears. "We made a deal. I shook your disgusting fucking hand."

Freddy seemed confused for a moment or two before his face lit up; it was an act, and no doubt for her benefit. "You mean _this_ hand?" he asked innocently, flashing a rotted grin and lifting his arm with a flourish of dancing fingers. He looked sideways at it, then up at Nancy, then sideways again like a mischievous little boy. Winding up his other arm, he slashed all four razorblades down into his wrist. The hand dropped to the floor as an uneven spray of black blood and viscera rained over it from the stump. Its fingers curled against the flat carpet in withering spasms. He kicked it aside and it bounced off the wall, tumbling under one of the pews. Nancy searched for it for a moment as if it were the key to her freedom.

Freddy had grown a new one by the time she looked back. He slunk up the altar steps and she came forward to meet him, rage blocking out her fear. "Well that takes care of _that_ ," he said. "Any other misunderstandings I can clear up for ya?"

"I did my part; you said I could go. Amanda won't let you keep me here, you lying bastard."

A chuckle rumbled low in his throat. "I don't think you understand how powerful I am now; I don't answer to that wrinkled cunt, _or_ those slimy black sacks of shit. I don't answer to anyone."

"You-"

"Shut your mouth," he growled. "I'm not done. See, a brand new career opportunity has opened up here and I think you might be interested."

He loomed over her as he spoke. Nancy's feet felt like they were sinking into the ground. Her bones seared inside her, crunching and compacting. The dirty white sleeves of her pajama top hung empty over her tiny hands. Freddy tucked his chin into the hollow of his neck and stared down at her with a smirk. His face was far away, shadowy and towering, and her eyes grew wide before she looked back down to examine her body. Like a perverse magic trick, a small white dress with creampuff sleeves had taken the place of her oversized shirt and pants. It was buttoned up the front and tied with a bow around the waist of her short, sexless figure. A child's figure.

"My last little jump-roping cunt has…retired, and slaughtering piglets is no fun without background music," he said. "You can sing, right?"

.

.

.

 _To be continued…_

* * *

 **A/N: Ta-daaa! The (almost) lemon you've all secretly (and not-so-secretly) been waiting for! I'll start working on the next chapter tomorrow, and I hope my lazy ass gets it finished within 2-3 weeks. Please review; I live on reviews and instant ramen, and I'm all out of instant ramen.  
**


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